Board of Directors
CRHD Board of Directors
Board of Directors of the Centre for Research and Human Development are supreme body and their duties to monitor and control the organization’s functioning, provide direction, and to participate rules and regulations of the organization.
CRHD Board of Directors
Dr. Lul Salad Ibrahim
Chairperson and Founder of CRHD
Dr. Lul Salad Ibrahim Chairperson and Founder of CRHD is an experienced Somalia women activist with over 8 years of working experience in youth and women activism, humanitarian, human right and development organizations in Somalia. Excellent interpersonal skills, report writing and capacity development, as well as optimistic, commitment and real drive to make positive change. MBBs, LLB Law and Master Student.
Dr. Ria Aerts
Director International Entrepreneurship, Sustainability and Empowerment
Dr. Ria Aerts is PhD, and specialist in Entrepreneurship and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) with special emphasis on innovation and digitalization, globalization, women and youth entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, family businesses, and circular economy. She has experience working with organizations and companies in diverse industries and has worked both in the private and the public sector. She has been involved in these areas as a consultant, advisor, mentor, business owner as well as an award-winning academic researcher and teacher. She is multicultural and multi-language savvy having lived and worked in several countries across 4 continents. She belongs to extensive networks of entrepreneurs, academics, and consultants in Europe, Latin America, the USA, Africa, and Australia.
Selected experience:
- Dr. Ria Aerts had led the development of the GOC Youth Global Empowerment (‘YGE’) program, a globally innovative program that works with primary school, secondary school and tertiary students to identify passion, develop and complete an international project.
- Dr. Ria Aerts’ more than 25 years of consultancy, industry, and academic experience in international entrepreneurship and SMEs has led to policymaking in areas related to business development, business growth, and business survival on local and national policy levels.
- Created an SME platform to enable SMEs to stimulate entrepreneurship for the whole of Latin America by collaborating with several stakeholders, including business research institutes and many governments.
- Advocate for circular economy and social entrepreneurship by helping vulnerable individuals (women, refugees, immigrants) reach their potential using proprieta ry entrepreneurial programs.
- Contributed to Policy Development for supranational organizations including the European Union, the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), and the OECD in the subject matter of transnational harmonizing SMEs, entrepreneurship, and family business management.
- Co-owner of a cooperative retail platform connecting hundreds of retail stores to millions of customers (individuals and companies) globally by providing patented hightech features like ShopBuddy™ which is a digital deal provider and built-in price comparison tracking feature.
- Current Mentor and teacher to nascent and established entrepreneurs with special attention to individuals in need of empowerment (women, youth, refugees, and immigrants).
- Taught courses and provided advice on several SME and entrepreneurship subjects to members of supporting organizations (banks, industry federations, and universities) and government officials from Europe, Russia, and China.
- Dr. Aerts was awarded a PhD in Business Economics from Belgium’s KU Leuven (ranked as Europe’s most innovative university). Her Masters in Quantitative Analysis developed the ability to conduct data analytics of extreme and large datasets with both sparse or large and complex data structures.
- She is a prolific author of several articles and chapters in books on entrepreneurship, internationalization, family businesses, women entrepreneurship, co-creation of innovations between hospitals and small businesses, digital entrepreneurship, and digital collaboration.
- Dr. Ria Aerts presented several papers at international conferences in Europe, the USA, and Canada. Recently, she was awarded the prize for ‘Best Paper Award’ at the 9th International BAMDE and ECSB conference on Youth and Women Entrepreneurship in Challenging International (Global) Business Environment in Bulgaria for her contribution to digital entrepreneurship, digital collaboration, and women entrepreneurship research
Dr. Chris Sotiropoulos
Managing Director, Mainstage Incubator (Australia)
Dr. Chris Sotiropoulos is PhD and has extensive expertise in Nation Building and Peace Building Capability Development platforms through global commercialization of innovative products and services. He serves as Co-Founder and CEO of Global Opportunities Commercialization and Director of APAC Health, both private companies that deliver commercialization advisory and their own products to national and international governments, charities and commercial organizations. The businesses focus on both social enterprises as well bas commercial enterprises.
He is part of an international networked group comprising the highest level of government, finance, global and niche distributors, high network families, innovators and global experts. He is also a practicing Lawyer, focusing on International Trade and Commercial Law transactions, assisting clients to quickly grow their business, develop strategy and implement corporate restructure for global expansion in US, Europe, Africa and Asia.
He serves on private and public governing boards and charities in several countries. He holds a PhD in Molecular Microbiology from RMIT University, a Law Degree from Monash University and Executive Training in Leadership and Strategy in Pharmaceuticals and Biotech Executive Training from the Harvard Business School.
In 2020, he has presented on the issue of Nation Capacity Building for many industries to diverse forums, including Afghanistan, Nigeria, India Australia and South Korea. Whilst CEO at GOC, GOC has provided Nation Building advice to the Republic of Somalia and other interest groups in Nigeria and India.
Dr. Hassan Sheikh Ali Nur
Lecturer at National University of Somalia
Dr. Hassan Sheikh Ali Nur has a PhD in International Relations from the University of Malaya in Malaysia. He teaches on the BA & MA Political Science and International Relations programs at the National University of Somalia and SIMAD University. His chief areas of teaching including National Security Studies, Foreign Policy Studies, Election Studies, and Public Policy. He has contributed to the scholarly Journals such as Sarjana Journal of the Faculty of Arts and Social Science, University of Malaya and Intellectual Discourse, IIUM. He has appeared on nBBC, VOA, Aljazeera TVs, as well, Local media including SNTV, Universal, Goobjoog, SBC, ans Dalsan TVs.
Nur’s research interests include the National Security Studies, history and governance of nSomalia, the identity crises (mixing up clan’s identity, Islam’s worldview and nationhood). He attended on 22- 24 September 2014: International Small Arms Control Standards (ISACS) Assistant Tool. Hosted by International Peace Support Center, Nairobi, Kenya as well on 17-21 June 2019: International Electoral Policy and Practice Course, sponsored by CREATIVE (USAID), in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Dr. Shahid Yamin
Executive Chairman and Co-Founder Global Opportunities Commercialization Pty Ltd (‘GOC’)
Dr. Shahid Yamin is PhD. He has career spans over forty years in multiple countries and industry. He has diverse experience in academia, industry, and consulting in Australia, S.E Asia, Europe, South Asia, Middle East and MENA region.
He generously and honestly shared his expertise in multi-disciplinary areas of strategy, creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship in all the different sectors with an aim to always give more than the expectation of the client. Throughout his career, he has focused in using his knowledge and expertise to foster a positive change in the society. Many of his students are now running multimillion-dollar businesses in different parts of the world. These ex-students, even today acknowledge that the values and norms that they have learned and discussed in the class have helped them to create socially responsive businesses.
In GOC, he has spearheaded the social entrepreneurship unit and has recently delivered a keynote address in a United Nation sponsored conference in the Federal Republic of Somalia. The keynote address was titled “Poverty vs Poverty Mindset – A Social Entrepreneurship Framework to Alleviate Universal Poverty” and he was the first among the sixteen-keynote presentaters. As most of the nations senior leaders, including the Deputy Prime Minister, were present to listen to his keynote address, the impact was that they became interested in the proposed framework and wanted to have more detail discussion. Currently, the Federal Republic of Somalia has become the first country in which GOC has projects for socioeconomic development of a nation. In addition, GOC have also initiated global youth and women empowerment programmer which is gaining traction. GOC is also currently working with Pacific Island entrepreneur’s resident in Australia as well as Pacific Island resident entrepreneurs to help upscale their entrepreneurial businesses globally.
In the United Arab Emirates (‘UAE’), Dr. Yamin set up “Emirates Center of Innovation and Entrepreneurship” with a grant of $1.2 million USD. The main focus was the empowerment of Emirati women graduates to creatively develop new ideas and execute innovative and entrepreneurial Homebase businesses. Due to cultural constraints, women graduates were limited in gaining employment. The program offered by this Center was highly successful and women were able to start a significant number of businesses. By developing and using the skills, women graduates created economic value and increased the status of women as productive contributor to their society.
In the Sultanate of Oman (‘Oman’), Dr. Yamin developed a proposal for setting up the world first “Omani Centre of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Developing Countries”. The focus of this Center was to offer programs to develop entrepreneurs and employers in diversified industries. The Centre also created a Community Outreach Program with an objective to foster entrepreneurial skills that can be applied in existing businesses. The program was promised a funding of $10 Million USD. The proposal was submitted to the government, but due to slump in oil prices the national GDP was adversely affected, the government delayed the financing due to unexpected current social and economic crisis. As Executive Chairman and CoFounder of GOC, Dr. Yamin has developed the concept of “Smart Institute” for developing appropriate technology base entrepreneurs in poorer region of the Federal Republic of Somalia. Furthermore, GOC is assisting Pacific Island Entrepreneurs to scale their businesses in global markets.
The vision and value of GOC is to change humanity by sparking individuals’ passion to ignite human potential and talents. Through creative decision making and training drives intrinsic human potential propel economic growth within developing societies. The collective effort through the especially designed Social Entrepreneurship Framework for communities replaces poverty and the existing poverty mindset with a growth mindset to facilitate social and economic growth. The GOC leadership teams strongly believe, those social and economic empowerments are the drivers of peace in the world community. Self-help raises the self-esteem of individuals which then become a creative asset for the community. It gives humanity a purpose to live and grow.
Dr. Yamin also allocates significant time to community organizations’. This includes his involvement of the Access and Inclusion Advisory Committee of the Casey Council, which is the largest and rapidly growing municipal council in Melbourne, Australia. The mandate for this Advisory Committee is to develop proposals relating to Access and Inclusion issues faced by the constituents and prepare recommendations for the council to approval and action. As an Advisor, he is working towards creating a novel initiative on Youth Engagement to enable full realization of human potential through mentoring, training, and helping developing a growth mindset. He regularly interacts with youth groups to understand their ‘ground realities’ and guides them to consider and action innovative career paths that provide fulfillment and keeps them away from crimes and drugs culture. He is also involved in finding solutions for disabled constituents to access to various services and meaningful activities.
He values the multicultural nature of the municipality and have participated and contributed in the development of community cohesion, tolerance, and understanding. He has also been involved with the Rotary movement since 1975. He is currently a member of Rotary Club of Melbourne, Australia’s largest and oldest club, and is involved in different activities related to community development.