With over 12 years of experience handling over 5000+ client projects for businesses globally with a team of 40+ employees, Wafa Alobaidat is widely known as the CEO of award-winning communications agency Obai and Hill. She is an award-winning serial entrepreneur, TEDx speaker, and public speaker represented by The Middle East leading speaker’s bureau, MENA Speakers.
Wafa is a graduate of the esteemed University of the Arts London. She started the fastest-growing digital magazine in London in 2009 with a support network of over 500+ creatives. Sketchbook achieved more than 100,000 downloads and copies printed and would go on to create over 12,000+ pieces of content that spanned over 1200+ pages.
Wafa has become one of the region’s experts in accelerating career progression for women. Her success is grounded in hosting the Women Power Summit, an annual event that attracted 6000 attendees, 314 women speakers and 280 corporate partners. Wafa also hosts a number one rated Apple podcast show Women Power podcast, and interviewed more than 117 women leaders on the show and partnered with advertisers and affiliates such as GoDaddy, Bath and Body Works, Zain Telecom, BMMI to deliver content to a global audience. Wafa is a fellow at The Vital Voices GROW, a leading business program whose founder leaders are Hilary Clinton and Madeleine Albright. She was named one of the top 50 most influential women leaders in business by Business In Gulf. Wafa is an alumnus of the Global Shaper network, is a former EO member and EO accelerator board member, board member of the Bahrain Disabled Sports Federation for disabilities. She was also a committee member of the SME Board at the Bahrain Chamber of Commerce.
Wafa has delivered 50+ talks globally engaging multi-sector audiences like the Global Entrepreneurship Summit at Stanford University, TEDx, United Nations organizations, KPMG, the University of the Arts London, Women Economic Forum KSA, SME World Summit Dubai, 30 Under 30 Youth Summit and Gateway Gulf. Her expertise lies at the nexus of growth and scaling up, with underlying themes of empowering women and youth, entrepreneurship in the Middle East, and starting and scaling companies. Wafa has been featured in Harper’s Bazaar Arabia, Wanda, CNBC, Arab TV, MBC, Gulf Life Magazine, Brown book Magazine, Arab TV, Washington Post, Levi’s, Startup Magazine, Entrepreneur Middle East and many more renowned publications.
She presently is the visionary at the helm of the edutainment platform PLAYBOOK, as the Founder and Chief Executive Officer leading business strategy and fundraising.