Mr. Ahmad Ashkar is the Founder and CEO of the Hult Prize Foundation - named in a TIME Magazine cover story featuring the top five ideas changing the world. The 2016 Esquire Magazine Entrepreneur of the Year, Ahmad has spent nearly a decade creating, launching and advising for-good, for-profit companies in more than 100 countries. He is a leading authority on entrepreneurship, innovation, and venture philanthropy, and serves as an advisory board member of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and is a member of the Entrepreneurs Expert Network of the World Economic Forum. As a leading worldwide expert in crowd and development, Ahmad has been recognized as one of the world’s top Arab-American entrepreneurs by leading Middle East publications including Gulf Business, Arabian Business, and Gulf News.
Since founding the Hult Prize in 2009, Ahmad has led the growth of the foundation into the world’s largest engine for the development of early stage startups in the impact sector with more than 50,000 entrepreneurs participating annually. A global network of over one million people in more than 100 countries, the Hult Prize is home to the world’s largest community of millennials seeking to good by doing well.