Theme: Be the Change

Our theme for this year is inspired by the social entrepreneurs who are forging the positive change we want to see in the world around us and thus our tag line for TEDxMUBS 2019 is "Be the Change".

MUBS Spears Campus Auditorium
Abdul Khader Street
Beirut, Beyrouth, 113 7501
Lebanon

Jawad Salah Haidar

CEO, CTO and co-founder of Heatechs

Jawad is a passionate mechatronics engineer who strives to find solutions for problems. As member of a dedicated university team he won the National Hult Prize Competition in 2018 for their startup company, Heatechs. Their discovery how to integrate a material into mattresses that releases heat accumulated during the day for up to seven hours at night is especially useful for refugees in camps.

Joslin Kehdy

Founder of Recycle Lebanon NGO and Ecosouk Beirut

Dedicated to collectively, dynamically and holistically shift the story of our throw away society, Joslin sheds light on Lebanon’s regional inherent circular living culture. An activist focused on solutions to bring about positive change including recycling, sustainability and creating sustainable products she founded the Middle East’s first zero-waste lifestyle shop called EcoSouk. Based on a grassroots movement to reduce environmental impact the shop also has a recowaste section to collect materials as resources to give to producers and a book and clothes swap.

Mariana Santos

Founder and CEO of Chicas Poderosas

Mariana is a trained animator and a visual storyteller. She leads design thinking workshops to increase multidisciplinary approach to storytelling, and she is a leader in community transformation via digital training. Founder of Chicas Poderosas, a movement to train, inspire and involve more women in technologic newsrooms, she has created teams of artists, developers and journalists to improve visual and interactive storytelling in Latin American media. This network has been enriching story development, execution and digital delivery of news.

Maya Karkour

President and Board Member of the Lebanon Mountain Trail Association (LMTA) and Managing Director of EcoConsulting

Maya is in charge of developing and helping implementing environmental education programs along Lebanon Mountain Trail, working with the Ministry of Education and public schools. She has directly worked on numerous projects aiming at reducing their environmental footprint –including the eco-renovation of Casa Batroun, the first project in the Middle-East to achieve the British BREEAM “Excellent” certificate in February 2014 and the Lebanese Architects Sustainability Award in 2017. Additionally, she is one of the main local trainers and mentors of the EU SwitchMed Green Entrepreneurship program and a fellow of the Middle East Leadership Initiative (MELI), Class IV, of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.

Nancy Yamout

Social Worker

Nancy Yammout is co- founder and president of Rescue Me , a non- governmental organization focused on violent crimes and violence prevention . Nancy and her sister , co-founder Maya , have interviewed more than a hundred prisoners in Roumieh prison and Barbar el Kazin accused of extremism - related charges. They developed a behavioral analysis profile to enable vocational training opportunities, expressive art and psycho-social support programming for these individuals.

Salim Azzam

Community-based Storyteller and Illustrator and Instructor in Visual Communication Design

Coming from a design background Salim believes in design that focuses on people’s needs not just consumption. His graduate studies offered him opportunities for undertaking social design in communities, where he came to understand that design for social change is more meaningful than commercial design. Salim started a socially conscious brand to give the dying Lebanese craft of embroidery a second life and to give rural women behind it an income and that collaboration between designers and communities could serve as a source of positive energy and create outcomes that can impact our lives.