Mo Gawdat

About Mo Gawdat

Mo Gawdat is the former Chief Business Officer of Google [X], an entrepreneur and author of Solve for Happy.

Mo has an impressive combined career of 27 years, starting at IBM Egypt as a Systems Engineer before moving to a sales role in the government sector. Mo moved to the UAE and joined NCR Abu Dhabi to work in the non-financial sector. He then became acquainted with the consumer goods sector as Regional Manager of BAT. At Microsoft, he held various positions for seven and a half years, and in his last role at Microsoft, he led the communications sector across Emerging Markets globally.

Mo joined Google in 2007 to give his business in Emerging Markets a head start. He is fascinated by the role technology plays in empowering people in emerging communities and has dedicated years of his career to that passion. Over a period of six years, Mo initiated nearly half of Google’s global operations.

In 2013, he transitioned to Google’s notorious innovation department, where he led business strategy, planning, sales, business development, and partnerships. [X] does not aim for incremental improvements in how the world works. Instead, it seeks to develop new technologies that will reinvent the status quo and deliver a radical, tenfold – 10x – improvement. This leads to seemingly Sci-fi ideas such as: Project Loon, which aims to use high-altitude balloons to provide affordable internet access to 5 billion people on every square inch of our planet, Project Makani, which aims to revolutionize wind energy generation with autonomous carbon fiber kites, self-driving cars, Google Life Sciences, and much more.

The business team led by Mo has designed innovative business models. These are analogous to the disruptive technologies that [X] creates and have forged deep partnerships and global deals that have enabled [X] to be stronger and healthier and to build products suitable for the real world.