Morocco: Khaoula Morchid Reverses Brain Drain through Entrepreneurial Leadership

By Ouassima Boujrad

Fez - Some amazing women come from Morocco and Khaoula Morchid is one of them.

She is the founder of Future Moroccan Entrepreneurs, and is a 20-year old Moroccan girl. Born and raised in Marrakesh, she decided to take a special path outside of what is seen in Morocco as the norm for an outstanding student who has always been the first in her class, school and region of Marrakesh Tensift Elhaouz.

Khaoula attended Ibn Toumert Secondary High School and finished the first year of Sience and Maths Baccalaureate [the 11^th grade]. While also taking English classes at the Center for Language and Culture, she found a poster about the African Leadership Academy (ALA). After a selective admissions process, she left Morocco in 2011, to attend ALA where she had the chance to develop her entrepreneurial leadership skills by going through a rigorous curriculum and by holding various leadership positions such as the CEO of a student run enterprise, the chair of the ALA student government, the head of the ALA delegation to Harvard Model United Nations and Georgetown MUN in Qatar.

Khaoula is currently studying at the University of Notre Dame in the U.S. as part of the prestigious Hesburgh-Yusko Scholars Program which is a “comprehensive merit-based scholarship and program that seeks to attract, encourage, and equip extraordinary students who will have a transformational effect” worldwide. She has developed a passion for entrepreneurship and development. This made her spend this summer working on sustainable development projects in Germany and Bangladesh where she met Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus.

After her return to Morocco for summer vacation, she organized the 4^th edition of Future Moroccan Entrepreneurs (FME) on August 11 -14, 2014 in Marrakech, an initiative she founded with some of her classmates while she was at ALA. FME is an entrepreneurship and leadership program that aims to create a proactive generation of leaders who take action to address their society’s needs. Khaoula says that Moroccan youth have a lot of potential and can help change their country if they move from talking to acting by “making their ideas a reality” and she hopes that the spirit spreads through FME and other initiatives.

[caption id="attachment_136761" align="aligncenter" width="960"] Photo Courtesy of Future Moroccan Entrepreneurs, Marrakech 2014[/caption]

Khaoula is eager to continue learning inside and outside of the classroom through conferences she attends with delegates from all over the globe (Three Dot Dash in New York, World Business Dialogue in Cologne and others). She looks forward to returning to Morocco to apply the knowledge and experience she will acquire in her years abroad in shaping the way entrepreneurship works in Morocco and the whole African continent.

Finally, Khaoula has earned various awards, given by the African Leadership Academy, including: Self Leadership Award, Most outstanding EL Journey (Entrepreneurial Leadership), Leadership Award ("For the student who has demonstrated practical Leadership in the ALA community"), and The Best Mathematician Award for the years 2012 and 2013.