Ali Faramawy – Vice President of Microsoft International – Africa

As vice president of Microsoft International, Ali Faramawy has a number of responsibilities both on the business strategy and the business operations fronts. He is an active member of the International leadership team that is responsible for the company’s strategy and initiatives. He also has a visible role among the company’s worldwide emerging markets community.

Faramawy is directly responsible for Microsoft’s operations in the Middle East & Africa (MEA) Area. MEA is one of 13 areas that comprise Microsoft’s worldwide operations. It represents one of Microsoft’s fastest growing and dynamic markets and certainly its most diverse one. Microsoft MEA operates through 30 offices and covers more than 70 countries across three continents.

Throughout his 20-year career in the IT industry, Faramawy has held different technical, sales and managerial roles in different parts of the Middle East and Europe with companies such as Dun & Bradstreet Software, NCR Corporation, Yokogawa Marex and, finally, Microsoft.

Faramawy joined Microsoft in October 1997, as the general manager of Microsoft Egypt. After a successful four years in that role, he moved on to assume additional responsibilities for the area of Eastern Mediterranean, which encompassed Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Cyprus & Malta.

In May 2002, Faramawy moved to take on the newly established position of regional director, in charge of sales, marketing and services for the Middle East and Africa region. He led the efforts to transform the company’s regional presence with a newly established regional headquarters and a much wider geographical presence. He was promoted to this position in April 2004.

Faramawy graduated from the Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University, majoring in computer science and automatic control and has an MBA, specialising in strategic marketing, from the University of Hull in the UK. He is married and has two sons. He loves the IT industry and its ability to empower people and transform industries. He is passionate about the future of people in emerging markets. He also enjoys music, reading and the occasional round of golf.

Ultimately the mission of Microsoft is to enable sustained social and economic opportunity for those at the middle and bottom of the world’s economic pyramid—the next 5 billion people.  In the short term, Unlimited Potential aims to reach the next 1 billion people by 2015 by exploring solutions in three key interrelated areas. Each is crucial to developing sustained economic opportunity:

• Transforming education
• Fostering local innovation
• Enabling jobs and opportunities

In these three areas, Microsoft Unlimited Potential can create the greatest possible impact in building a virtuous cycle of sustained social and economic development. This cycle drives communities; helps build connections to form new communities; is fuelled by local and global partnerships; and, most importantly, ultimately becomes locally sustainable. Sustainability is a key indicator of effective programs and activities, and is our long-term measure of success.

http://www.microsoft.com/emea/about/executivebiographies/aliFaramawy.mspx

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