Salma El Hariry is an Egyptian serial entrepreneur who has a vision of growing emerging world economies and fueling job creation by building successful social & tech Innovations, especially in the MENA region.

Salma holds a bachelor’s degree from the American University in Cairo in Business Administration with a minor in Computer Science. She then went on to graduate from Hult International Business School in San Francisco with a Masters Degree in Digital Marketing. During her studies she consulted for over 50 startups as well as working at Stanford University’s Peace Innovation Lab. The Lab’s mission of evangelizing technologies that create positive global social interactions made a major impact on her life goals.

Inspired by Sheryl Sandberg’s ‘Lean In’ book and organization, which supports women leadership in the workforce, Salma decided to join PITME™ as an early co-founder and head of strategic partnerships. She worked closely with governments, NGOS, incubators, VCs and Investors to create new opportunities in MENA. She also co-created multiple international startup initiatives including PITME Catalyst, Hack for Peace in the Middle East and the TechWadi Annual Forum held in San Francisco, which aimed to build bridges between Silicon Valley & the Middle East.  

Salma is currently the founder and managing partner of ScaleUp Ventures, which is the very first services-based Venture Fund in the region that aims to create more success stories out of MENA-based growth-stage tech and social startups by providing them with access to global know-how & talent in key areas necessary for their development. All while recently joining Innovety, an Egypt based innovation strategy consultancy’ as the managing director, helping kickoff & run a government initiative of Egypt’s first online innovation hub that aims at connecting, inspiring and educating the youth about tech, innovation and entrepreneurship. She’s also a Strategy Advisor for Ahead of the Curve’s Social Impact Fund, Entrepreneurship with Impact Ventures (EWiV) and a number of promising startups across the Middle East.

Prior to embarking on the entrepreneurial journey Salma worked as a Digital Marketing Director at Edutone, a leading b2b k-12 education technology marketplace, and as an Account Manager at Unilever. When she's not galvanising the Middle East's startup scene, Salma is passionate about Bollywood dancing and professional photography.