HE may be only 28 years old, but Firas Al-Jarrah always had big ambitions. Now he's created some history too: Firas is the first man from Saudi Arabia to graduate with masters in social entrepreneurship. Speaking to Saudi Gazette from San Francisco he said: “The Bay Area has the best innovation in the world. Saudi Arabia has powerful capability, but there seems to be a big gap between capability and reality. Social entrepreneurship is a perfect way to tackle business and social issues, and that's what I want to do now in the Kingdom.” Firas originally thought he would pursue a career in banking, but after working in the field of business and financial consulting for just over four years he decided it was time for a change. He wanted to become more of an entrepreneur and started to look for ways to achieve his dream. Spending hours online researching places that offered a masters in social entrepreneurship, he located a university in India and Hult International Business School in San Francisco. He quickly applied, got accepted, and arrived in California only three days before the program started. Recalling his arrival in the Bay Area, Firas told the Saudi Gazette: “There was a huge transition from Riyadh to San Francisco and there was a tremendous amount of challenges during all of that. To be honest, I didn't choose to come to San Francisco, I even didn't know anything about California and the Bay Area. But since Hult was the only school providing a complete masters program in social entrepreneurship, I chose to come here just to pursue my passion.” Aware that he would be the first Arab man to hold such a degree (two women from Saudi Arabia have the same degree), Firas added: “This gave me a huge incentive to be very active in terms of raising people's awareness about the filed and work on building its ecosystem throughout the Arab World.” Throughout taking his masters, Firas did his best to attend as many events and conferences as possible to widen his exposure to social entrepreneurship and deepen his knowledge. He also took advantage of being close to Silicon Valley, the home base of his role model, Jeff Skoll, the first president of EBay, the world's largest online market place connecting hundreds of millions of buyers and sellers. It has empowered individuals to become successful online entrepreneurs. Skoll, who has an estimated wealth of over $3 billion. Skoll went on to found the Skoll Foundation — the world's largest foundation for social entrepreneurship driving large scale change by investing in, connecting and celebrating social entrepreneurs and other innovators dedicated to solving the worlds most pressing problems. During his interview with the Saudi Gazette, Firas said: “Jeff Skoll leads by example of building a tremendous business, and using the success of that business to have long-term and sustainable impact on issues or people that need it.” With that in mind, it was just last week Firas launched” a Snapchat account called “SE4Snap” with a Riyadh-based colleague Lujain Al-Ubaid. “SE4Snap” aims to raise the awareness about social entrepreneurship's concepts and practices. It also wants to connect people in the Arab World to major global major players in the field of entrepreneurship both physically and online. “Our vision is to help building the ecosystem for social entrepreneurship in the Arab World and improve all Arab countries through empowering the social entrepreneurs and deploying social entrepreneurship concepts and practices,” he told Saudi Gazette. Since his graduation in August last year, Firas continued living in San Francisco to gain more experience by working on many different. projects. One of them was co-founding a specialized social network called “Kunnash” to enrich the Internet specialized content. The project will soon be live. He also worked as a remote consultant with a social investment company in Riyadh called “Feyan,” and he worked as a researcher with “Impact Space,” a company for social business people and entities in the Arab World. Not leaving himself much time to rest Firas is currently working as a customer development consultant with “CAN Mobilities,” a startup aimed at revolutionizing the senior care products industry. It was founded in the Silicon Valley by a Saudi entrepreneur. Firas' passion and vision for Saudi Arabia is genuine and ambitious. He plans to return to the Kingdom within the next year to apply all his skills and experience. “I am passionate about the ecosystem and that's what I will focus on, by building awareness, empowering people and being connected. Business are ready for this both locally and globally. I am ready to help.” It seems Firas and his ambitions may inspire hundreds more to pursue a degree in social entrepreneurship. Opportunities await.
