Lina Zdruli
Lina Zdruli is a social entrepreneur passionate about using business and technology as a tool for social good. She has experience building international entrepreneurship ecosystems, including Rawabi, Palestine, where she helped support local entrepreneurs and connect them to international markets. She also launched VRefugees, the virtual reality simulation of a refugee’s journey from Syria to Germany, as an education and impact tool viewed by over 4000 people. Lina holds a Masters from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University,where she researched and developed a roadmap for companies interested in assisting refugees to become employable in their local market which segments were published through the Urban Institute and Bertelsmann Foundation. After Georgetown, Lina worked at the World Bank helping bridge the humanitarian-development divide for forced displacement. Lina founded dafero, a social enterprise supporting vulnerable women through life skills and workplace training thanks to the sale of healthy date spreads. Dafero was awarded dozens of awards, grants and incubators, including but not limited to the Yunus and Youth Social Entrepreneurship Fellowship, the G20 Global Innovation Warehouse, is a current Halcyon Opportunity Fellow, a Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship awardee and won the $20,000 HerImpact pitch competition from the Ford Foundation. Lina is currently based out of Montreal, consulting with clients such as McGill University and Morgan Stanley on change and product management. She was featured in publications such as Forbes, Aspiring Entrepreneur, Voice of America, Highre.Co and Venture Forward, among others.