Mohamed Abdel Dayem is Director of Strategy at Daoud Education, where he leads the development of a higher-education platform built on "connect" Strategy — linking academic learning to real-world practice. A practitioner-scholar in the creative economy and education, he is Founder and Managing Director of Creative People Consulting and lectures in marketing, strategic planning, and creative entrepreneurship at Cairo University and Paris ESLSCA Business School, where he is completing a doctorate on Gen Z consumer behaviour. He previously served as Assistant Minister for Investment and Development at Egypt's Ministry of Culture, where he led the development of the country's first Creative Economy Policy White Paper. He hosts the podcasts Backstage and Qalam and Mic, and works across the MENA region on cultural policy, future-skills education, and the bridge between learning and livelihoods.