Manara is a social impact startup whose mission is to unlock the human potential of the Middle East & North Africa, uplifting the region's economy and diversifying the global tech sector. We focus especially on Palestine and women. We are experienced founders, operators, and technologists with leading investors (including Reid Hoffman, Jessica Livingston, Stripe, Y Combinator, Seedcamp) and advisers from Andela, Lambda School, and Honeypot.

This region has a rapidly growing population and a highly educated, diverse population. But nobody has cracked the puzzle of employment: college graduates face the highest youth unemployment in the world. Women are particularly impacted: in Palestine, 52% of computer science students are women, but 83% of them are unemployed. We run an entirely remote solution to identify the top talent, familiarize them with interviewing approaches, vet them, and find them amazing jobs (whether remote or on-site). It works: at Google 71% of our referrals in our last batch were hired. 

We don’t stop at job placement. Our vision is to build the top tech talent community in this region and support them at each stage in their lifecycle: how to get a promotion, become a manager, be the first woman engineer on a team, etc. The community is driven by a tech product that facilitates connection, shared learning, and motivation.