Ziad Abdulaal is a Saudi venture capitalist and entrepreneur based in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. He currently serves as an investment manager at Saudi Aramco Entrepreneurship Ventures (Wa’ed), a venture capital fund wholly owned by Saudi Aramco that focuses on innovative startups that aid economic development and diversification within the Kingdom. Abdulaal is also the co-founder of Mezmiz, Saudi Arabia’s premier online marketplace for healthy food. Abdulaal is passionate about entrepreneurship and has invested in several of the top Saudi startups working at Aramco Entrepreneurship Ventures (Wa’ed)
Abdulaal joined Saudi Aramco as an investment analyst in 2014 and held various assignments within the company including Aramco’s portfolio management team, managing Saudi Aramco’s non-core portfolio and was part of the team that setup the Saudi Arabian Industrial Investments Company “Dussur”, a $2 billion fund focused on industrial investments within Saudi Arabia. Abdulaal holds a Bachelor of Science in Finance from PMU and a Master of Science in Finance from Durham University
Amal Dokhan is the Director of The BABSON GLOBAL Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership (BGCEL). She held a number of roles in BGCEL including the New Ventures Acceleration and Corporate Innovation program. Throughout her career Ms. Dokhan gained a diversified range of experience in management and marketing related roles particularly in education and consultancy. Prior to that she worked in the KAUST Seed Fund where she developed marketing and events, while also providing a range of services to startup clients. Amal has previously managed an educational organization; during that time she designed programs and started several innovative initiatives to be implemented by the educators to improve the mindsets in order to foster creativity in the work place and the educational tools. In parallel to this she started her own business, which organized sports events and offered commercial consultancy to large organizations.
Bader is the Managing Director of Endeavor Saudi Arabia, he is coming from diversified disciplines as he was heading the SME development and debt financing division at the Saudi Aramco Entrepreneurship Center (WA’ED), where he worked directly with more than 200 startups companies in their business development stage, credit evaluation and approval while managing a portfolio exceeding USD 50 MM. He comes from a technical background that involved IT governance, database design, geophysical technologies. Besides his 10 years’ corporate experience, he had advised and invested in various local and international ventures in field such as motion pictures, streaming services, broadcasting technologies and SaaS. His voluntary contribution toward the local entrepreneurial eco system was vital where he has established a mentorship platform that is targeted to bring out corporations’ experts to help startups overcoming their business difficulties, also he put together the blue prints of an ICT university based incubator and acceleration program that was able to deliver successful ventures. Bader is holding a degree in Geophysics from King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia and MBA from London Business School.
