Young Professionals Network

Joana’s research work has focused on maritime (in) security; transnational organized crimes; the protection of civilians; and natural resource management and its security implications.

She holds a Bachelor of Arts in English and Psychology from the University of Ghana, and a Masters in International Studies (Development Cooperation) from the Ewha Womans University, Seoul, South Korea. She has also worked with the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport of Ghana as an administrative officer on an educational reform committee and later as a Confidential Executive Assistant to the Permanent Secretary. Joana speaks English fluently and minimal French.

Working with non-profit organizations as a volunteer, a professional and a consultant, and with over 5 years focus on youth employability to solve one of the biggest issues of Africa : unemployment. In 2015, she created SIDE, Social Impact and Development Employment, a social business focused on youth employment, through volunteering programs for soft skills building, incubating early stage young social entrepreneurs to reach a scaling level, and providing HR services to companies who are looking for employable profiles. In 2016, she launched EMPEOPLE, that stands for Empower People, a sales incubator created by a group of business experts and consultants who mentored over 100 small business owners over 3 years in Morocco, this business and skills incubator focuses on capacity building of entrepreneurs and young business owners, scaling of those businesses to create sustainable jobs for unemployed youth. EMPEOPLE mentored 6 companies and cooperatives, and helped create 20 new jobs for youth, 7 of them are for youth at risk, who were not in education, training or employment.

In Healthcare, She started another social business, Al Maghreb Qudurat, a company that provides training and counceling for care giviers and professionals who work with kids with autism in Morocco. The company is working on creating a library for therapy tools and educational materials to provide to low income families who are supporting huge expenses because of autism. Touria worked on women empowerment, education, youth engagement in public affairs, rural development, oasis preservation, to finally focus her energy on youth empowerment.

She is the former Program Director of Enactus Morocco, where she monitors the progress of 200 projects of teams of social entrepreneurs in 80 campuses of universities and vocational training centers, and accelerated 10 of them to become strong SMEs. Touria was previously the administrative and financial assistant of project conducted by the UNDP, related to Climate Change Adaptation in Oasis Areas in Morocco.

He graduated with an MEng in Computer Science from INSA Lyon. Le Point has described him as a ‘French Mark Zuckerberg’ and the Challenge magazine as a 'Moroccan Mark Zuckerberg'. In 2015 he was made President of the Jury at La French Tech, a government-run entrepreneurship initiative.

His latest company, Squarebreak, got acquired by Accorhotels to join forces as CTO of onefinestay, the world leader in Luxury Private Rental. Réda is now active driving innovation and technology in the private rental world as much as investing in new startups as a Business Angel.

He was then invited to join the Prime Minister’s new team focusing on digital government. He spent almost five years, working for three Prime Ministers. For his work on government transparency and integrity, he was included in New Europe 100, a list of the most important innovators in Central and Eastern Europe published by Google, Financial Times and other institutions in the region. As of September 2017, he’s the president of the Romanian Coalition for Digital Economy.