About MENA Alliances
MENA Alliances is a woman-owned business dedicated to connecting global companies with highly skilled, vetted talent from the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region. Spending your childhood and youth in a refugee camp and conflict zone could lead you to believe that there is no opportunity available to you in the world. No opportunity means no hope. We wanted to change that for ambitious, talented people who have the skills but are under-employed. Scale your business by building remote teams from MENA’s ambitious top professionals.
Helping to Alleviate Poverty and Injustice
Talent is equally distributed. Opportunity is not.
About Our Founder
MENA Alliances’ story begins with our award-winning founder, Abeer Abu Ghaith. Abeer had an early vision and ability to find doors in places where others only saw walls. Born in a refugee camp where she lived until she was 12, Abeer and her family ultimately moved to Hebron, a city in Palestine’s West Bank. Abeer graduated from a local university with honors, but afterward, she found herself without many options to apply her talents. When she sought teaching roles at the university, many male students refused to be educated by a female instructor. When she looked for other work, she came up against a lack of economic opportunity in the occupied West Bank.
So Abeer found another way. She taught herself how to build her own business and support herself through remote work. As Abeer’s success grew, she expanded her approach to help others in the same situation. In 2013, Abeer founded her first company, StayLinked, which connected talented Palestinian freelancers with businesses around the world.
Through StayLinked, Abeer used Skype to teach tech skills to talented young people in Gaza. At a time when Gaza’s unemployment rate hovered near 43%, Abeer’s company provided jobs for more than 370 men and women, mostly from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. And that was just the beginning.
“As a woman, I can help and change the world in my own way, even if society wants to confine us in the kitchen and the house,” says Abeer Abu Ghaith. “I have changed the world from the house.” She believes that when you connect people–especially young people and women–with jobs, training, and opportunities, you are opening the door to freedom for them.
In 2015, Abeer founded MENA Alliances to expand her work to include talent outside Palestine in the greater MENA region. Abeer holds a Master’s degree from the University of London and has worked with some of the leading companies and institutions around the world.
Companies spanning Silicon Valley, Western Europe, and the Gulf have a voracious need for the technical skills that drive their innovation. MENA Alliances has connected diligent, enthusiastic, qualified talent from across the MENA region to these companies.
MENA Alliances’ Evolving Journey
2013
Abeer launches her first company, StayLinked, from her village in Hebron with nothing but her laptop and internet connection. Abeer’s passion and dreams come into sharper focus, and StayLinked begins to lay groundwork for what MENA Alliances will someday become.
2014
Stay Linked creates 370 jobs for young people in Palestine through freelancing and microwork models.
2015
Abeer launches MENA Alliances to expand her work to include talent outside Palestine and in the greater MENA region.
2017
MENA Alliances introduces a new service line offering AI Data Labeling & Annotation.
2018
Research & Development in the UK, “Business Success Models Linking Developed and Developing Countries
2019
Two new MENA Alliances service delivery centers open in Gaza and Hebron.
2020
MENA Alliances introduces its ready-to-go “Dev Pods” Developer Teams service. MENA Coding School opens to provide training to young talents.
2021
MENA Alliances shifts to flexible models of service, including staff augmentation, project-based models, and placement models, enabling direct cooperation between customers and their developers.
2022
Continually improving our processes to enhance sustainability and scalability. Our dreams keep evolving to meet and create new opportunities.
Our Team
Our Advisory Board
Denise M. Menelly, US
Denise M. Menelly is a global banking executive with more than 35 years of experience. A close mentor of Abeer’s for over a decade, Denise offers guidance to MENA Alliances on digitization, process simplification, and strategic direction.
Brenda Ropoulos, US
Brenda is a communications professional with over 25 years of experience in the field, including directing global communications programs for worldwide industry-leading manufacturers, spearheading marketing strategies for start-ups and designing special events for Global 500 companies. Brenda is guiding MENA Alliances in crafting a solid communication infrastructure and strategy.
Osama Al-Zoubi, Saudi Arabia
Osama is a tech and business executive and chief technology architect with experience ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies. Osama is passionate about supporting start-ups and young talent in the MENA region. He advises MENA Alliances in solidifying their tech roadmap and digitizing their process.
Anni Rowland, Australia
Anni is an advocate for digital literacy with an unrelentingly creative vision. Anni pushes MENA Alliances to ask tough questions for growth, helps us envision the future of our work, and guides us in carving a path for our next generation of talented professionals
Gábor Tóth, Hungary
Gábor Tóth is an executive mentor and advisor and a consulting technical expert for the World Bank on private sector development projects in the Middle East. Gábor has unique experience in operating impact outsourcing businesses and ensuring their financial sustainability. He advises MENA Alliances in enhancing operations, securing the longevity of our mission, and creative problem solving.
Annegien Blokpoel, Netherlands
Annegian is a catalyst investor, venture builder, and a strategy and management advisor. She takes a hands-on approach to mentoring and has worked with many start-ups on strategy building. She taps into her insight as a venture building to advise MENA Alliances on building systems to take our work to the next level.