Damian Vavanos

Co-Founder and Executive Director

Damian is passionate about all things that has to do with building relationships, supporting people reach their potential and all aspects of entrepreneurial mindset.

His background is in Marketing and Operations although his favourite aspect of his pre-NPO life was that he was a digital nomad.

As Head of Business Development he makes sure that our fundraising, partnerships and company’s strategy is  being implemented while making sure to build long lasting relationships with our stakeholders.

Meryem R. Yurtçiçek

Events Coordination and Partnerships

Meryem is an MIS Student, trying to find her ikigai by trying all sorts of experiences in various fields.

She’s been juggling challenges that taught me Time Management, Self-love, Leadership Skills, and Teamwork on this journey.

She has experiences on Graphic Design, UI/UX, Digital Marketing, Social Media Management, Business Development & Sales.

She believes that we learn by doing so you can always see her working on new projects. She has self-taught herself how to draw, two languages various design programs.

Challenge is the key for growth and she’s an individual looking for the next challenge!

Anastasia Kamalina

Employability Officer

After receiving a bachelor’s degree in economics, she began to look for her place in the world. She tried her hand at Business Development, Sales, Recruitment and Digital Marketing.

As a student, she joined AIESEC. There she realized that she can make an impact on the world and fight inequality and injustice. From now on, her life-long goal is to help people achieve their dreams and fulfill their potential. This is what we have in common in SHA.

Melih Kaan Batibay

Business Development Associate

Melih started his career as an Advisor and Graphic designer on a blockchain project.
After working on this project for 3 years, he joined AIESEC. He came to the position of Business Development Vice President at AIESEC Turkey at his local.

After his 1-year assignment, he started his alumni life and continued his way as a graphic designer for a while.

Then he met with Social Hackers Academy, and he is working as a Business Development Associate.

Valentina Pasinato

Junior Project Manager

Originally from Brazil, Valentina comes from an International Relations background. She has always been interested on how the global and the local dynamics interact.

Having worked in Community Development Projects both in Brazil and Europe, she believes that real changes start with local actions and the empowerment of its community.

She is interested in International Development and the creation of sustainable projects and policies, designed for positive social impacts on the lives of Refugees and other minorities, specially aiming to help them overcoming their traumatic experiences and reintegrating society.

Slim Kasraoui

Co-Director, Products

Slim has worked in banking, physiotherapy, customer service, full-stack developer instructor, or entrepreneur. He has been switching his career, and it took him 34 years to find out his passion for development, especially hacking the formal education system. Now he is part of the education team of SHA.

Based now in Tunisia, he lived in Athens for three years. Nowadays, he prefers being called learn-teacher or learn-structor rather than teacher or instructor. He loves learning and trying new stuff.

Halim Boussada

Technical Instructor

Halim is a graduated Full Stack JavaScript developer from RBK with a Bachelor Degree from ISET Djerba in Electrical Engineering. This experience has helped him to reach a dexterity in communication, negotiation, autonomous learning, and leadership. Moreover, he is skilled at mentoring and delivering information to the upcoming generations as he is very passionate about education and, consequently, improving our education system. Working as an Instructor at RBK has allowed him to put his passion into practice as he guided students to become the best versions of themselves by helping them with their daily sprints and projects, and now he hopes that he will do the same in SHA.

Yasmeen Othman

Education Manager

From Palestine, She has a degree in telecommunication engineering and technology.
She worked as a project coordinator for one year and a half in the Palestinian Medical Relief Society. Then in 2019, she joined a coding Bootcamp in Jordan to become a full-stack developer. Spending five months away from everything except writing code, learning new techniques and stuff in different aspects of life made her passionate to be a part of changing others’ life and passing knowledge to someone else as what others did with her.

The journey started in 2020, as she worked for one year as an Instructor in RBK-Jordan coding Bootcamp which helped her improve her technical, teaching, and management skills. And now is the time to start a new chapter of this journey with another great community in SHA.

Talel Elghali

AWS Technical Instructor

He has studied in the Faculty of Science of Monastir that’s where he got his license degree in Mathematics. After two years of experience giving private classes in Mathematics, he decided to develop his career further and he joined a coding bootcamp. He got his certification as a full stack developer after 5 months.

He worked in this field as backend developer , a full stack instructor then as an AWS re/start instructor after getting the cloud practitioner and the associate solution architect certifications.

These experiences helped him to improve many soft skills like communication, problem solving, leadership and specially teamwork.

Ayed Oukhay

Blockchain Technical Instructor

A Blockchain developer who’s dynamic, curious and autonomous, who has a proven taste for organisation, attention to detail and perseverence.

Zainab Allaham

Employability Manager

She came from Syria in 2012 to start her journey in Jordan. She has both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in business administration.

A highly ambitious, self-motivated, and energetic person with excellent communication skills. She has 2 years of experience in marketing and 4 years of experience in human resources. Then she worked for RBK as admissions lead for Jordan and Iraq, also as a student-facing class coordinator.

Her goal is to help the refugees get a better life and have the same rights as anyone in the world to pursue their dreams.

Loreta Esposito

EU Projects Officer

Loreta has a degree in Sciences and Technologies of Communication at the University of Rome “La Sapienza”. After several experiences as a restaurant manager in Rome, she decided to travel and work abroad. She has always been interested in supporting refugees and increasing the empowerment of women.

Loreta developed her skills working in many countries: Spain, Portugal, Poland and Rwanda. During her experience in Rwanda with Caritas Italia she has been in charge of projects in the field of education as a supervisor and project manager. Thanks to her past experiences she has acquired managerial skills and now collaborates with the SHA team.

Cecilia Ragone

EU Projects Officer

Cecilia has an educational background as a social worker and project manager in social and international development projects. She strongly believes in social justice and equal opportunities for all and has always tried to contribute as she could to making society more inclusive and open. After various work and volunteering experiences in her country (Italy) and abroad (both Europe and developing countries) in the field of education and international cooperation, she decided to join SHA because she wants to actively participate in the social change and making education accessible to everyone.

Nil Muge Felekten

Co-Director, Operations

Nil studied Graphic Arts in Turkey, as she couldn’t stop drawing since childhood. After her graduation, she worked in Istanbul in different industries like publishing, tech, academy, and advertising. After gaining significant experience, she decided to study Master’s Degree in Graphic Arts and started freelancing as a designer.

During her studies, she had the chance to work in Spain and in Greece as an Erasmus+ intern. That was when she met with SHA and she feels lucky to be part of this team that drives her to learn more every day.

Karim Ben Aziza

Growth Marketer

Dimitar Todorovski

Marketing Manager

The ship that sailing through whatever may be. Studied Tourism and Management,
then Digital Marketing, Dimitar found himself in a world full of creatives, solutions,
and ideas. As he improved in Digital Marketing he was lucky to find SHA as his
harbor, where he can push his knowledge and skills way beyond, and with that help,
this organization achieves the objective of its existence; transfer the knowledge to
the people willing to learn.

As his love for nature got stronger every day, he understands that like nature,
people must have a wider specter of aspects in order to develop their own strategy.

Damianos Vavanos

Co-Founder

Damianos’ background is in Digital Marketing and Operations and has taken the role of Director. He’s worked in different NGOs all his life and recently he was working with Solidarity Mission as a Digital Marketing Consultant.

Right before embarking on the Social Hackers Academy project he was travelling the world while building his businesses.

Chris Owen

Co-Founder

Chris’s background is in Computer Science with several years professional experience working for start-ups, international companies and freelancing. Most recently he was working for The Guardian as part of their engineering team. Chris has taken on the role of CTO and deals more with the day to day running of the school.

Michael Thomas

Co-Founder & Investor

Michael is a US based entrepreneur and journalist who originally laid the groundwork that the organisation is built on. Having spent times in refugee camps as a journalist he gained vital knowledge for the project and developed the first concept for the code school as it exists today. In the past, Thomas has worked in San Francisco working on his own start-up. As a successful journalist and storyteller, Michael has written for Fast Company and The Atlantic.

Panos Papadopoulos

Panos Papadopoulos is a partner at Marathon VC, an Athens based venture capital investing in tech startups. Prior to joining the finance world, he was a co-founder and CEO at BugSense, a mobile analytics company that was acquired by Splunk Inc. He has invested in more than 20 startups and loves crypto-currencies, IoT and open source infrastructure. He is passionate about change and breaking down existing thinking models.

Chris Jones

Chris grew up between Australia and New Zealand but in 2015, at the height of the refugee crisis, moved to Europe. Feeling strongly for those that are most vulnerable and dismayed by what he saw as a lack of opportunity for refugees in Greece, he decided to seek out a partner in helping refugees achieve their full potential.

Apostolos Papalexiou

Apostolos is an experienced Learning and Development Consultant & Trainer, Leadership Mindset Coach, and entrepreneur. He is always passionate about helping people grow and succeed. He believes that leadership and communication skills are crucial to personal and professional success, and he has dedicated his career to training and coaching these skills to others.
Throughout his career, he has trained and coached over 3.500 professionals from various industries and has helped them develop their skills in leadership, sales, communication, training, coaching and entrepreneurship. He is known for his commitment and dedication to his clients and his motto of “LEAD BY EXAMPLE” is reflected in his own actions and behaviour.
In addition to his work in the corporate world, Apostolos has also founded Solidarity Mission, an international training organization focused on social entrepreneurship and soft skills development for young entrepreneurs. He has been the Executive Director of SM for ten years and has recently become a member of the board of advisors.

Apostolos’s passion for helping vulnerable groups has
also led him to initiate and become a member of the board of advisors of the Social Hacker Academy.

Nevertheless, Apostolos’s entrepreneurial mindset and acumen didn’t stop there. In 2023, he entered the travel industry by founding Sailing Odysseys, a sailing travel company that organizes sailing trips, retreats, team-building sailing events and training in Greece. In this way, he combines his passion for learning and development with his passion about travelling in the most effective way. His vast
experience in training and coaching has taught him the importance of leadership and effective communication, and he is using these skills to create unique and unforgettable sailing experiences for his clients.
His passion for helping others and his dedication to his work have made him a respected and sought-after professional in his field. He has made a positive impact on countless individuals and organizations and has helped them reach their full potential.