Kefa’s professional career has been at the intersection of strategy, real estate, finance, and technology. He is a Development Manager at THE LINE in NEOM, the world’s largest ongoing urban development and nation-building project. In his current role as part of the residential and commercial development strategy team, Kefa’s work spans from urban development economics & planning, policy and market assessment, and applied innovation & foresight. This builds on previous experience with the Dubai International Financial Centre, where his work on mega project master planning and real estate portfolio strategy directly drove the development of assets worth over 300 M USD, including MENA’s largest Innovation Hub.

These opportunities built upon his experiences as the founder of Stimula, a virtual venture builder offering a startup-as-a-service technology platform that was selected for the Founder Institute’s inaugural MENA cohort. Collectively these experiences gave him unique insights into the (mis) alignment between micro-entrepreneurial experiences in tech, and the economy development ambitions of policy & profit driven government actors.

Before Stimula, Kefa worked as part of the real estate innovation R&D team at IMKAN, a private equity backed developer in Abu Dhabi, and as part of the development strategy consulting team at Knight Frank in Dubai.

An alumnus of New York University Abu Dhabi, Kefa’s academic background is in Economics and Political Science. He is an avid traveler, budding diver, and is always looking for the next adventure and opportunity to pioneer. A massive of Kenya, Kefa has lived much if his adult life abroad, with the longest spells in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, the USA, the UK, and Argentina.