Get to know Hisham Shehabi, our COO, who is focusing on developing relations with the Olympic Movement and working with Olympic partners and clients on projects related to tech commercialization, future trends analysis, and innovation strategies.. Read on to learn about him.
1. Not every athlete has the chance to be an Olympian. Could you share with us, briefly, the experience you had in the Olympics?
Coming from a nation with very little professional sporting infrastructure in the past, it was eye opening to see the way Olympic athletes were supported, prepared and focused during the Games. I loved being an athlete, interacting with and learning from other athletes in the Olympic Village, perhaps the one place on Earth where that many people from different backgrounds live, eat and train together for close to a month. It motivated me to learn more about how sports are developed in different countries, from the sporting side and then later on more on the business side. My favorite moments were definitely the Opening Ceremony and meeting my idols, Ian Thorpe, Michael Phelps and Federica Pelligrini!
2. What is your favorite sport/s?
I’m a swimming geek, always was and always will be. Football, tennis and basketball round off the top 4, but I take great pleasure in attending events from high school, to college to amateurs and professionals. The language of sport is universal, and so I find many sports beautiful to follow especially the more I get in touch with the athletes, coaches, technical officials and fans. Each sport has a unique gravitational pull.
3. You were working at the International Olympic Committee previously. What made N3XT Sports a possible next step for you?
The IOC provided me with a great platform to slingshot into an international career in sports. I learned a lot in my 4 years there about how global sports works, and more importantly, how the environment was changing rapidly. It felt very much like the sports industry needed to accelerate its overall transformation if it was going to deal with all the challenges it was facing. So for me, trigger #1 was the vision of the founding team of N3XT Sports: Propel the sports industry through technology & innovation. With these 2 strategic areas, it was clear that we could bring about disruptive long-term change to the sports industry and develop a global ecosystem of stakeholders in the process, which in my mind is a recipe for mass impact. Trigger #2 was the team itself. I was quickly exposed to the founding team’s way of thinking, initially in my role at the IOC, and later on as a member of the co-founding team myself. The concoction of experience, passion, forward-thinking, exponential mindset, was honestly, addictive! More importantly, as individuals and as a group, there were so many characteristics and qualities that I appreciated and valued that I saw in them, such as teamwork, fearlessness, hard work, risk-taking, and experimentation. While those were the triggers for the move from corporate life to startup life, there are now so many more reasons for pushing forward in this journey.
4. As a COO of N3XT Sports, what’s your role? Who do you work with and what type of work do you do?
We are in a high growth stage of the company, so I focus on different topics. Over the past 12 months we have grown the team threefold, grown to serve close to 30 clients, and grown our CRM to over 4’000 industry contacts. From a client perspective, I work mostly on our Olympic Movement clients and with clients on the investment services side. With the team, my focus is on supporting each of them to achieve their individual objectives, to ensure our internal communication improves, and that we are cultivating the right culture collectively as we grow. For example, in October last year, together with Celine from our team, we organized a company-wide retreat to discuss strategy, culture and team communications. It is an absolute pleasure to be working with this exceptional group of people, who are all intent on disrupting the sports industry!