Ibrahim Safadi is the founder and CEO of Luminus Education. He is a Jordanian entrepreneur whose passion and commitment to help young people improve their lives drove him to create an innovative education-for-employment model that targets low and middle-income students. Frustrated with his own university experience, that he felt was not equipping him with relevant skills for the job market, Safadi dropped out of university and started the long and challenging journey to promote vocational education in Jordan as a pathway to improving the career prospects of youth.
Being a world-class entrepreneur, Safadi took the opportunity offered by a partnership with the European Union in 2016 to set up Luminus Shamal Start; an incubator, Fab Lab and Maker Space focused on high potential start-ups in the hardware and manufacturing sectors. After just sixteen months in operation, 54 start-ups have been incubated and over 160 jobs have been created.
Dr. Ayman Maqableh has a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Nottingham, UK. He has extensive experience in workforce development, technical and vocational education and public-private partnerships. He is currently the Dean of Al-Quds College, managing more than 300 academic and administrative employees.
Working as Manager of the University Technology Center at the University of Nottingham and as Energy Technologist at Rolls Royce Plc. in the UK – together with his experience in dealing with international organizations such as USAID, TEMPUUS, GIZ and Pearson Edexcel – has given Dr. Maqableh wide international knowledge.
Ahmad Jarrar is a member of the executive team that manages the companies of the group. Throughout his career, he has held managerial positions including Chief Financial Officer for Kulacom and Senior Manager at Ernst & Young Consulting.
Jarrar has extensive experience in financial consulting, financial modeling and program management across major industries. He has participated in many strategy workshops and has reformed industries to allow privatization of government owned entities.
Jarrar holds a Finance MBA from Cardiff Business School/University of Wales, UK and a BA in Business Administration from the American University of Beirut.
A learning and development professional with over 20 years of academic and commercial experience in the MENA and SE Asia regions, Kelleher joined Luminus Education in 2015 to support the development of vocational solutions to meet market and donor requirements.
Kelleher was the Middle East & North Africa Regional Manager for City & Guilds, where she successfully built both the regional business and team to achieve significant year on year growth while maintaining margin, an important criterion in a non-for-profit organization. She has also worked for Dubai University and Dubai Aluminum.
Ms. Aoife joins Luminus Education Group with twenty years’ experience across government, non-profit and private sector organisations. Having worked in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East she has developed a specialty in leading change management in organisations in start-up and growth phases.
The focus of her work has been predominately within organisations which serve youth through education and development opportunities.
Technologist experienced in leading IT strategy, operations, and projects to ensure all departments are synchronized and work efficiently to maximize customer satisfaction and profit through business process re-engineering and digital transformation. With over 15 years of experience in different industries 12 of which in Education sector.
Started as IT specialist at the American University of Sharjah then moved to Dubai World Trade Center as Systems Administrator and after that worked at Laureate Vocational Saudi Arabia as Operations and IT Executive Director.
Holds a BSc in Computer Science and MSc in Engineering Systems and Management (IT Management) from the American University of Sharjah. I hold multiple professional certificates.