Hala Fadel is a co-founder and managing partner at Leap Ventures, a venture capital firm that focuses on global technologies with operations in MENA and Europe. She has 20 years of experience in finance and entrepreneurship, working first in mergers and acquisitions at Merrill Lynch in London and then as a portfolio manager for 12 years in European Equities at Comgest, a €20bn growth equity fund.
In 2000, Hala founded Booleo, a telecom software business that was later acquired as an internal solution by a client. She also founded and chairs the MIT Enterprise Forum of the pan-Arab region, an organization that promotes entrepreneurship and organizes, among other things, the MIT Arab start-up competition.
Hala is an angel investor in start-ups across the Middle East and Europe, and has launched a co-working space in Beirut called Coworking+961. She graduated from HEC in France in 1997 with a Masters in Financial Economics and attended the Berkeley Haas School of Business, she holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Leap Ventures is a tech-focused entrepreneur-led venture capital firm that operates in MENA and Europe and it seeks to actively partner with entrepreneurs with innovative ideas in order to quickly accelerate and scale their vision and operations globally.
Leap's value-add platform and extensive international network provide entrepreneurs with the tools to sharpen their technology edge, develop their customer base, recruit top talent, and structure their operations in order to heighten their ability to face hyper growth.
Founded in 2005, the MIT Enterprise Forum Pan Arab is, a non-profit and an avid promoter of entrepreneurship and innovation worldwide affiliated with the prestigious MIT University. With offices in Beirut and Dubai our mission is to develop and nurture a culture of entrepreneurship across the Arab region. The MIT Enterprise Forum Pan Arab has a proven track record in promoting MIT-style entrepreneurship through our solid platform developed in the past 10 years enabling us to empower entrepreneurs by providing opportunities for networking, knowledge sharing, showcasing businesses, coaching, and mentoring.