SUMMARY

Management professional with deep experience of complex product range management and analysis, technology industry exposure, proposal development and stewardship, and technology-to-business matching.

BIO

Nationality: Danish/Egyptian

Marital Status: Committed

Date of Birth: 16^th of November 1975 (Hillerød, Denmark)

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Middle East & North Africa IT Specialist

Grameen Foundation Washington DC, USA March 2006 – July 2007

• Technology project management:

  1. Management of Mifos pre-launch beta projects and deployments

  2. Development of gap statements, Scope of Work for open source-aware partners to execute the beta project, supervision of execution (project monitoring)

  3. Responsible for driving the solicitation and acquisition of proposals from candidate contractors, as well as driving and supporting the partner's selection

  4. Managing post-beta similar projects across the region

• Provision of IT-specific technical assistance to regional partner microfinance institutions, which include:

  1. Support for development of IT strategies

  2. Support for technology selection and implementation

  3. Consultation on staffing structure and recruiting

• Responsible for the project of creating of a regional open source ecosystem for the Mifos open source microfinance portfolio management system (third party service providers and implementing institutions)

• Due diligence of information systems in microfinance institutions in the region, including issuance of recommendations and risk assessment

Assistant CEO

IT Synergy Cairo, Egypt January 2005 – March 2006

• Project formulation, proposal development

• Management of engineering team and R&D projects (overwhelming Linux and open source platform emphasis)

• Segment analysis of business (projects, partners, fields, etc.) and issuance of fact-based decision support to CEO

• Organizational design and company initiation

• Business development and follow-up

• Translation of organizational requirements into technology proposals

• Issuance of project status reports for diverse clients including the UNDP, the Italian Cooperation, and various public and private sector enterprises

• Execution of training and capacity building programs

IT Synergy is a start-up consultancy focused on open source; my role has been as support to the founder of the company, providing the requisite business analysis, ICT4D, and open source know-how to the company.

Local Expert Consultant

Instituto per la Promozione Industriale Cairo, Egypt January 2005 – July 2005

Participation in an EU-funded study executed through the Industrial Modernization Centre in participation with the Italian Ministry of Industry

• Provision of local vision

• Analysis and reporting on acquired data

• Assessment of sector participants

• Derivation of strategic vision and sector recommendations

  Full study is online at http://www.imc-egypt.org/en/studies/CeramicStudy.pdf

various positions

Ezz Industries – Ceramic BU Cairo, Egypt July 2000 – January 2005

• Recruited on senior management fast-track programme (Leaders of the Future); positions held in reverse chronological order:

1. Product Range Manager

2. Assistant Marketing Director

3. Head of Marketing Intelligence

• Responsibilities have included:

1. Research and analysis-based product mix management

2. Design and implementation of organizational and software methodologies to aid in production and sales planning

3. Formulation of annual sales and production plans

4. Monitoring of plan achievement

5. Provision of decision support for pricing strategy through technical analysis of historical data as well as computer modeling

Additional duties falling outside the domain of the official functions have included provision of consultation to the IT department in the areas of technology selection and improving the reflection of business requirements in existing systems.

EDUCATION

BA – Financial Management

Arab Academy for Science & Technology Alexandria, Egypt 2000

International Baccalaureate

Li Po Chun United World College Hong Kong 1994

LANGUAGES

• Danish – mother tongue

• English – native speaker-level fluency

• Arabic (both classical and Egyptian dialect) – native-level fluency

• Italian, French - rudimentary

VOLUNTEER WORK

I have been involved in open source advocacy since 2000; my focus has been on ICT4D and open source in business and government as facilitated by my diverse work experience and non-technical academic background.

I have been one of four co-founders of the Egyptian Linux Users' Group (http://www.eglug.org). My role in the group since its inception has always been more organizational than technical.

I have provided Linux and open source advocacy and technology consultancy to diverse important institutions such as the Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation, the Ministry for Insurance and Social Affairs, and to the CIIC and EFG Hermes (amongst the largest financial institutions in the region) inter alia.

To complement my strong organizational and advocacy role in open source, I am quite competent technically also.

COMPUTER LITERACY

• Preference (within the limits of pragmatism) for Linux and open source software

• Excellent Linux/UNIX user experience

  • End user systems (OpenOffice.org, scribus/inkscape, gimp, etc.)

  • Personal competence with and preference for UNIXy tools, such as mutt, procmail, LaTeX, vi, etc.

  • Very comfortable with the entire standard Linux environment, with all the tools that entails

• Some Linux server administration-class competence (httpd, server security, firewall policy development and iptables configuration, etc.)

• Rudimentary scripting skills (bash, python in progress), and a basic familiarity with C

• Extreme intimacy in general with Linux-based systems from custom kernel compilation to iptables; installation, hardening, etc.

• Distribution experience: Debian, Ubuntu, Mandriva, Linux From Scratch

• Very proficient with Microsoft Office applications (including Project)

For a sample of my technical writing, see http://sancairodicopenhagen.com/joe/node/35

SPEECHES & WORKSHOPS

• 2007: Sanabel MENA Microfinance Industry Conference (Sanaa, Yemen): Technology for Decision Makers (speaker and trainer)

• 2007: Sanabel MENA Microfinance Industry Conference (Sanaa, Yemen): New Technologies for Microfinance (panel participant)

• 2006: EFG Hermes/Ideavelopers (Cairo, Egypt): Sustainable Proprietary Software Business Models in an Open Source World (speaker)

• 2006: Ministry of Insurance and Social Affairs (Cairo, Egypt): Linux Administration Introductory Training (trainer)

• 2005: Egyptian Open Source Community/CultureWheel (Cairo, Egypt): Linux iptables: Firewalling Introduction

REFERENCES

• Heather Henyon: General Manager, Grameen-Jameel Pan Arab Microfinance Ltd.

hhenyon@gramenfoundation.org

+1 646 217 9895 (Mobile – U.S.)

• Vincenzo Puliatti: CEO, IT Synergy

epuliatti@itsyn.com

0020 10 170 8470