George A. Bitar is Managing Partner of Rho Acceleration, an affiliate of Rho Capital Partners, a New York-based private equity firm with $2.5 billion under management and offices in New York, Palo Alto and Montreal. Prior to joining Rho in 2013, George was co-Head of the Global Private Equity Group at BlackRock. Prior to joining BlackRock, George co-founded in 1994 Merrill Lynch Global Private Equity which managed $7 billion of Merrill Lynch proprietary and investors’ capital in global leveraged buyouts. Prior to joining Merrill Lynch in 1990, George was an Assistant Vice President of Thomson McKinnon Securities Inc. Foreign Exchange and Futures division.
Amal Hamady is Cofounder and Vice President of Sales & Business Development at Momentum Microsystems Inc. a systems integration and services technology company, located in Silicon Valley, California. She oversees the company’s global med-tech clients, focusing on OEM medical device and life science solutions, sustainability, and supply chain management. Amal holds a B.A. in Political Science from Skidmore College, New York, and a M.B.A. from Santa Clara University’s Leavy School of Business.
Habib Kairouz is Managing Partner of Rho Capital Partners, a New York based private equity firm with $2 billion under management and offices in New York, Palo Alto and Montreal. Rho’s activities span all classes of private equity investments, including venture capital in early stage technology and healthcare companies, direct private equity investments in more mature growth companies, and fund investments in all classes of venture capital and private equity funds. Prior to joining Rho in 1993, Habib had five years of investment banking and leveraged buyout experience in New York with Reich & Co. and Jesup & Lamont. Habib received a B.S. in Engineering and a B.A. in Economics from Cornell University and an M.B.A. in Finance from Columbia University.
Wissam Kairouz is a Managing Director at Morgan Stanley’s Leveraged & Acquisition Finance Group in New York where he is in charge of different industry verticals including Media and Financial Services (FIG). Prior to joining Morgan Stanley in 2009, Wissam was a Managing Director in the Global Leveraged Finance group at Merrill Lynch. Prior to joining Merrill Lynch in 1998, he worked in fixed income investment management with Black Rock for 4 years. Wissam received a B.A. in Economics and Political Science from McGill University and an M.B.A. in Finance from Columbia University.
Marc Malek is a Managing Partner of Conquest Capital Group LLC, an alternative asset management firm with more than $700 million in assets. His previous work engagements include trading for a large hedge fund, heading global exotic FX Options for UBS, and later heading Proprietary Trading for the combined UBS/SBC in Europe. Marc graduated with honors from the California Institute of Technology.
Rima Moawad is a partner in the Mergers & Acquisitions/Private Equity Group of Loeb & Loeb in New York. She focuses her practice on the representation of private equity firms and management groups in domestic and cross-border mergers and acquisitions, restructurings, going private and other corporate transactions. Prior to joining Loeb & Loeb in 2015, she had been a partner at Proskauer Rose and Haynes and Boone. She has represented clients such as Thakoon LLC in its sale to Silas Chou, Neuberger Berman in the $1.5 billion management buyout from Lehman Brothers, Grifols S.A. in its $4 billion leveraged buyout of Talecris Biotherapeutics, and numerous transactions on behalf of Merrill Lynch Global Private Equity. Rima is also active in a number of non-profit organizations, including LIFE, of which she is a member of the Board of Directors, as well as the Mata Amritanandamayi Math, one of India's largest non-governmental organizations.
Zeyd is the Vice President of Environmental Markets at BGC Partners in New York, where he focuses on providing advisory and brokerage services to institutional clients in the renewable energy space. Zeyd enjoys giving back to the community and, aside from SEAL, is a Board Member of the Alumni Association of the American Community School in Beirut. He graduated with a Joint Honors degree in Economics and Finance and a minor in Middle Eastern Studies from McGill University.
Joumana Tager is currently a volunteer tour guide at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Past experience includes more than nine years in the banking operations field at UBS. Joumana holds a B.A. in Economics from the American University of Beirut and an M.S. in Management Information Systems from Boston University.
Rula Tamer has extensive experience working with organizations in the non-profit and educational sectors. She has been leading fundraising campaigns for schools and not for profits since 2001. She has also managed a multi-million Capital Campaign of a major private independent school in the San Francisco Bay Area. She started her career at Visa International in Risk Management. Rula holds a B.A in Political Science from Boston University, and a M.A. in International Relations from Harvard University.
