Rahaf Harfoush is a Digital Innovation & Foresight Strategist who has a deep passion for exploring how technology is affecting the way we communicate, work and play. Rahaf is the co-founder of Red Thread Inc, a consulting agency that provides clients with out-of-the-box thinking to tackle strategic challenges. She connects business leaders to the latest global foresight trends and offers a unique approach to digital strategy, ideation and innovation.
Formerly, Rahaf was the Associate Director of the Technology Pioneer Programme at the World Economic Forum in Geneva, Switzerland where she researched and identified start-ups that were using technology to improve the state of the world. She was responsible for managing the Web & IT category of the programme and in integrating the companies within her portfolio into the Forum’s global network, various initiatives and regional events, such as Davos, the Annual Meeting in Switzerland, and the Annual Meeting of New Champions in China. Rahaf Harfoush is also the co-founder of EmergingWomen, a non-profit launched in late 2011 that curates events world wide to strengthen local and global support systems for women entrepreneurs in emerging economies. The first event will take place in South Africa in 2012.
She currently serves as a Global Ambassador for the Sandbox Network, a community of exceptional entrepreneurs under the age of 30. She is on the Board of Directors of Taking IT Global, a non-profit that enables the world’s largest community of youth to create positive changes in their cities. She is also on the Advisory Board of OneLeap.to, a site that helps connect young people to business leaders. In August 2008, she joined Barack Obama's New Media Team at the Chicago headquarters as a full-time volunteer during the Presidential election campaign. In 2009, she published a book about her experiences titled Yes We Did: An InsideLook at How Social Media Built the Obama Brand. Rahaf Harfoush was also the Research Coordinator for the best-selling Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything (Tapscott 2006), and contributor to both Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World (Tapscott 2008) and Everything I Needed to Know About Business I Learned from a Canadian (Brody 2008).
