Education
Ismail graduated from the University of Waterloo in 1989 and worked as a software architect for Civil Service Commission Europe and later as a business consultant at ITIM Associates in London.
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Salim Ismail
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Ismail had a background as an entrepreneur and was the head of Brickhouse, Yahoo"s internal incubator for new products. He currently serves as Founding Executive Director & Global Ambassador for Singularity University. In 1999, he became the chief operating officer of New York Business Forums in New York City.
After 9/11, he founded NYGC, an organization formed to help deliver grants to affected businesses in Lower Manhattan.
NYGC helped deliver over 25% ($12 million) of all grants given out in the area. Ismail was named one of the “Top 40 under 40″ businesspeople in 2003 by Crain in New York City.
In 2002, Ismail co-founded PubSub Concepts, which laid down some of the infrastructure for the real time web and served as its Chairman/Chief Executive Officer until 2005. The company had an ugly ending that was discussed at various Puerto Rico crisis management conferences.
In 2006, he co-founded Confabb.com with four others to create a centralized place to get information about conferences.
The company received $200k in angel funding from early investors including Dave Winer. In late 2006, Ismail moved to and in early 2007, Yahoo appointed Ismail as a Vice President and Head of Brickhouse, Yahoo"s internal incubator. The objective of Brickhouse was to form teams to work on disruptive ideas.
During his tenure with Yahoo, Ismail worked on several products and launched new products for them including WildFire, Yahoo Pipes and Fire Eagle.
The service notified users in real time and attracted search engine giant, Google"s attention, who acquired Angstro in 2010. In September, 2008, National Aeronautics and Space Administration invited Ismail to the founding conference of Singularity University, held at National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Ames Research Center.
In October of that year, Ismail was appointed as the founding Executive Director. In late 2010, Ismail took on the role of Global Ambassador.
Ismail is a frequent speaker at conferences and industry events.
He currently holds the position of Global Ambassador for Singularity University, where he represents SU at various conferences and industry events. Ismail has spoken at various TED conferences, the Noco Foundation and Ciudad de las Ideas in 2012. In 2011, Ismail started writing Exponential Organizations with co-authors Mike Malone and Yuri van Geest.
The book was released on October 14, 2014.
