It was a busy Friday afternoon at Mall of the Emirates when Reem spotted the perfect pair of designer sunglasses—only “Pay in 4” at checkout stood between her and a spontaneous splurge. With a few taps in the Tabby app, she split the AED 1,000 cost into four interest-free installments, knowing her salary wouldn’t stretch unfairly. For millions of Gulf shoppers like Reem, Tabby’s buy-now-pay-later model has transformed the thrill of discovery into manageable payments—no credit cards, no hidden fees, and fully Shariah-compliant.

It’s 8:15 PM in Dubai’s Jumeirah district when Fatima taps “Ride” in the Careem app. Sixty seconds later, a Captain arrives—smiling, professional, and armed with charging cables for her phone. As dusk deepens, Fatima navigates through a tapestry of services in the same interface: she’s scheduled groceries for tomorrow morning, settled her electricity bill via Careem Pay, and even booked a table at her favorite shawarma spot. What began as a simple ride-hailing service in 2012 has, by 2025, evolved into a full-blown “super app”—a digital butler for everyday life across West Asia.

When the first call came in on a chilly January night in 2016, it wasn’t from a high-profile investor or a government minister—it was from a woman in rural southern Jordan whose village clinic had closed three hours earlier. Holding her smartphone to her ear, she described her son’s persistent fever and asked, almost in a whisper, for medical advice. On the other end of the line, a licensed physician with Altibbi guided her through basic fever management, warned her which red-flag symptoms to watch, and reassured her that more help was available if needed. For that mother, hundreds of kilometers from Amman’s specialist centers, Altibbi’s 24/7 Arabic-language telemedicine service wasn’t just convenient—it was lifesaving.

It was just before dawn in November 2017 when the generators fell silent in Za’atari. For years, Syrian families in Jordan’s largest refugee camp had lived by the rhythm of rationed electricity—six to eight hours a day after sunset, paid for by UNHCR at a cost of over €450,000 monthly. Then, with the flip of a switch at the inauguration of a 12.9 MW solar photovoltaic plant—the largest ever built in a refugee setting—life in Za’atari changed. Suddenly, lights stayed on through dinner, food could be refrigerated, phones charged, and children had the power to finish homework by lamplight. What was once a landscape lit by diesel fumes now glowed softly under clean, silent sun power.

Nestled between the historic quarter and the burgeoning art districts of Beirut stands the unassuming workshop of Nada Debs. Here, under the warm glow of industrial lamps, master craftswomen in white aprons gently lay mother-of-pearl tesserae onto ebony wood panels, each minute sliver poised to become part of a larger tapestry. It was in this sanctum of silence and focus—far removed from the bustle of Milan Design Week or the glare of Instagram’s global stage—that Debs first understood her true calling: to fuse ancient Eastern crafts with clean, contemporary forms.

It was in 2006, on a stifling afternoon in Riyadh, that Dr. Ahmed Mater first truly understood his patient: the rapidly transforming Saudi landscape. Fresh from years as an emergency-room physician, he surveyed the city’s grid of concrete and steel, its gleaming malls rising beside crumbling mud-brick neighborhoods, and felt a jolt akin to a medical diagnosis. The skin of his homeland—its built environment—was showing the first signs of systemic distress. How, he wondered, could he translate this cultural fever into a language people could really feel? He put down his stethoscope and picked up his camera.

Christine Tohmé has spent nearly three decades forging platforms where art, ideas, and discourse converge—right in the heart of Beirut, a city that itself is both canvas and crucible. Born in February 1964, she came of age amid Lebanon’s civil war, a period that taught her firsthand the fragility of public space and the urgency of dialogue. After earning her BA in English Literature at the American University of Beirut (1984) and, later, an MA in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths, University of London (2007), she returned to her wounded hometown with a clear mission: to build an institution where artists could make work, thinkers could debate it, and communities could gather to reimagine their shared future.

Raed al-Saleh was born in 1983 in Jisr ash-Shughur, a town in Syria’s northwestern Idlib Governorate that would soon become the epicenter of conflict. As a child, he witnessed the seeds of civil strife sprout around him—his hometown’s narrow streets and ancient stone bridges providing uneasy passage for both soldiers and refugees. Yet even amid escalating violence, al-Saleh found his calling in service to others, volunteering alongside local neighbors to pack relief parcels and douse fires sparked by errant shell fragments. That instinct to help survive on, eventually propelling him from those makeshift efforts into the formal ranks of Syria Civil Defence—better known to the world as the White Helmets.