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Nathan Araya is a filmmaker, TV personality, producer, community leader and unshakable optimist dedicated to improving the lives of people around the world.

He was born and raised in Dallas and lived in several cities including London and Los Angeles. Nathan graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Mass Communications, and a Master in Business Administration from Concordia University Irvine. He currently runs a socially-conscious digital production company called Risk Happy. He describes himself as an obsessive learner who loves spending time reading, listening to podcasts, producing, and creating content. He is the creator of the documentaries Sincerely Ethiopia and The Diaspora Journal.

Connect with Nate:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NateAraya1
Email: [email protected]

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http://www.ethiospodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Mesfin_pt1_80kbps_pt2.mp3 Mesfin Getaneh is the cofounder of MeSh Cart, an online Ethiopian shopping site specializing in high quality Ethiopian Foods, Beverages, Books, Movies, and Clothing. Mesfin is also the President, Executive Director and Co-founder of Your Ethiopian Professionals (YEP) – formerly known as Young Ethiopian Professionals. YEP is a community of diverse professionals who are striving for growth, excellence and success in their professional and social lives. Recognizing the lack of effective networking platforms for young diverse Ethiopian professionals in the DMV area. Mesfin worked as a Patent Examiner in the US Patent and Trademark Office before starting MeSh Cart. Mesfin also served on the board of directors of Ethiopian-American Engineers and Scientists (SEAES). In response to the Horn of Africa famine in 2011, Mesfin served as head of Messaging at HornLight, a platform that helped share diverse, complex and nuanced narratives on the Horn of Africa. Mesfin holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of New Orleans (UNO). While in college, Mesfin participated in multiple fellowships and published research papers in collaboration with his mentoring professors from Stanford, Purdue, the University of Illinois (UIUC), and Northwestern. He also served as a Math and Physics mentor and tutor to high school and college students in Louisiana and Virginia. Links: Email Mesfin at [email protected] MeshCart: https://meshcart.com/ YEP: http://yepnetworks.org/

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http://www.ethiospodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Mesfin_pt1_64kbps.mp3 Mesfin Getaneh is the cofounder of MeSh Cart, an online Ethiopian shopping site specializing in high quality Ethiopian Foods, Beverages, Books, Movies, and Clothing. Mesfin is also the President, Executive Director and Co-founder of Your Ethiopian Professionals (YEP) – formerly known as Young Ethiopian Professionals. YEP is a community of diverse professionals who are striving for growth, excellence and success in their professional and social lives. Recognizing the lack of effective networking platforms for young diverse Ethiopian professionals in the DMV area. Mesfin worked as a Patent Examiner in the US Patent and Trademark Office before starting MeSh Cart. Mesfin also served on the board of directors of Ethiopian-American Engineers and Scientists (SEAES). In response to the Horn of Africa famine in 2011, Mesfin served as head of Messaging at HornLight, a platform that helped share diverse, complex and nuanced narratives on the Horn of Africa. Mesfin holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of New Orleans (UNO). While in college, Mesfin participated in multiple fellowships and published research papers in collaboration with his mentoring professors from Stanford, Purdue, the University of Illinois (UIUC), and Northwestern. He also served as a Math and Physics mentor and tutor to high school and college students in Louisiana and Virginia. Links: Email Mesfin at [email protected] MeshCart: https://meshcart.com/ YEP: http://yepnetworks.org/

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http://www.ethiospodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/ETHIOS_20170307_AntuYacob_1.mp3 Antu Yacob is Ethiopian a professional actress, playwright, and philanthropist. Antu Yacob was born in Dire Dawa, Ethiopia and raised in California and Minnesota. She received her MFA in Acting from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University and her BA in Communication from the University of Minnesota-Duluth. Her play Mourning Sun set in Ethiopia and the US was featured in the 2016 Kampala International Theatre Festival in Uganda. The play received its world premiere as part of Theatre 167’s 2015-2016 season at the West End Theater in New York last November. This past July, Antu’s autobiographic solo show In the Gray premiered in Project Y Theatre’s inaugural Women In Theater Festival at StudioTheatre@ TheatreRow in New York.

Antu’s two-woman play The Firsts, a historical piece about six women who overcame adversity premiered in Project Y Theatre’s 2013 New York New Playwrights Festival.

Her work has been featured in readings at the inaugural NowAfrica Playwrights Festival at Tisch-NYU, Crossroads Theatre’s CommonGround Festival, CoLAB Arts the Orphanage series and Project Y Theatre’s Racey Plays Series. As an actor, Antu’s theater credits include Risen from the Dough (Sam French OOB Short Play Festival-Winner) Mourning Sun (KITF and Theatre 167), In the Continuum original national tour (Primary Stages), Stepping out of the River at Dawn, Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World and A Jew on Ethiopia Street (Mixed Blood Theatre), Holiday Jubilee (Crossroads Theatre), Crowns (The Theater Project), The House That Crack Built (Pillsbury House Theatre) and No Longer at Ease (Pangea World Theater). Her film & television credits include Law & Order: SVU, Eminent Domain, Conjure, Fine Art, Walking in Circles and Gypsy (2017).

She is Founder of Shaggae’s Song Performing Arts Collective, a nonprofit organization that develops works focused on international women’s issues as well as providing performing arts education to grades 4-12. She teaches Acting at Rutgers University in New Jersey. www.antuyacob.com

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http://www.ethiospodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/20160115_ETHIOS_JomoTariku.mp3 Jomo Tariku was born in Kenya to Ethiopian parents. As a young boy growing up in Ethiopia, he was always drawn to the eclectic art pieces, souvenirs and furniture pieces his father collected while traveling across Africa. That combined with volunteering at a local woodshop in Addis, catapulted his interest in furniture design. Jomo graduated from The University of Kansas with a degree in Industrial Design. As part of his graduation requirement, he defended a thesis by designing a full line of African furniture and concluding that the market needed an alternative to popular European and other established furniture designs. From that point on, he has made it his personal mission to bring about a series of African furniture designs to light. Furniture designer Jomo Tariku has been designing and innovating centuries old African utilitarian design into his contemporary furniture lines for the last 20 years. Jomo finds inspiration in African hand carvings, centuries-old buildings, body art and scarification, pottery and baskets, hair design patterns and traditional woven textiles. Find out more about Jomo: Website: Jomofurniture.com Twitter: @JomoFurniture Facebook: Jomo on Facebook Email: [email protected]

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http://www.ethiospodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/20161119_ETHIOS_HamereDemissie.mp3 Hamere Demissie, Founder and CEO of Actuel Urban Living is a designer with a passion for contemporary art forms particularly furniture, interiors, fashion and visual arts. She has a dichotomous professional background going back and forth between her two lifelong passions of design and development economics – sometimes managing to miraculously combine her two passions in a single job. Hamere has worked as a designer of apparel, furniture and home furnishings and jewelry with various companies in the US, Bangladesh and Ethiopia. Her work with BRAC (Bangladesh), The Coffee Initiative (TechnoServe Ethiopia), and the Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency involved developing and implementing strategies to support market-led sustainable value chains – strengthening high-value commodities such as coffee, silk, wool and cotton and improving smallholder and urban poor integration into modern value chains. She successfully managed international certification in coffee for 80+ coffee agricultural cooperatives in Ethiopia as well as supporting the setup and management of finance partnerships with local banks and international guaranteeing institutions. As Chief Innovation Officer at Eleni LLC, she led the xLab an innovation lab involved in testing and developing human-centered solutions for commodity markets in Africa.
Hamere has also spent 10+ years working as a business development consultant for a range of large multinational companies in France, including for companies such as Dior, Shiseido and L’Oréal, building capacity of executive level staff on new learnings on subjects such as supply chain management, product development and marketing. Hamere holds a degree in Apparel Design from the University of Maryland, College Park as well as a Master’s degree in International Policy and Comparative Development from the University of Bristol, UK.
Actuel Urban Living is a creative furniture design company based in Addis Ababa and is the fulfillment of a lifelong dream of starting up a company in her beloved home town doing what she loves the most, while contributing to skills development of artisans in the city. Find out more about Azariah and about Enzi: Website: ActuelInteriors.com Twitter: @hamihamere Facebook: hamere.demissie Email: [email protected]

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http://www.ethiospodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/20161003_ETHIOS_AzariaMengistu.mp3 Azariah Mengistu is the co-founder of Enzi, a premium leather footwear brand based in Ethiopia. Find out more about Azariah and about Enzi: Website: www.enzifootwear.com Twitter: EnziFootwear Facebook: ENZI

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http://www.ethiospodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/20160824_ETHIOS_SaronYitbarek.mp3 Saron Yitbarek is the founder of CodeNewbie, the most supportive community of programmers and people learning to code. She’s also host of the weekly CodeNewbie Podcast and a program manager at Microsoft for Tech Jobs Academy, a technical training program for talented New Yorkers ready to launch their tech career. You can follow her @saronyitbarek.

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Maaza Mengiste is a novelist and essayist. Her debut novel, Beneath the Lion’s Gaze, was selected by the Guardian as one of the 10 best contemporary African books and named one of the best books of 2010 by Christian Science Monitor, Boston Globe and other publications.

Her fiction and nonfiction can be found in The New Yorker, Granta, the Guardian, the New York Times, BBC Radio and Lettre International, among other places. She is a Fulbright Scholar and was awarded Runner-up in the 2011 Dayton Literary Peace Prize.

Maaza writes fiction and nonfiction dealing with conflict, migration, the relationship between photography and violence. She was a writer on the documentary project, GIRL RISING and recently completed work on another documentary film, THE INVISIBLE CITY, which focuses on unaccompanied children refugees living in Kakuma, one of the world’s largest refugee camps, located in Kenya. Her second novel, set during the Fascist invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, is forthcoming.

Find out more about Maaza at maazamengiste.com and on twitter at @MaazaMengiste

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Solomon Kassa is a Senior Technology Consultant at Deloitte, a Fortune 500 global consulting firm. Before joining the management consulting world, Solomon worked as a software developer at the American Society of Clinical Oncology. He is also the producer and host of the Amharic TV Show “TechTalk with Solomon” that airs on Ethiopia Broadcasting Services (EBS), where he explores the topic of Science and Technology and interviews several highly accomplished Ethiopian-Americans in the field of science and technology. Solomon just recieved the 2016 (SEED) Society of Ethiopians Established in the Diaspora award in recognition for his extraordinary commitment to produce a science and technology show and hosting it for millions in his native language Amharic. Solomon is working on an all-amharic, first of it’s kind book based on the topic of Science and Technology.

Born and grew up in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Solomon left his country and moved to the United States in 2004 to fulfill his dream of pursuing higher education on a partial scholarship opportunity. He received his Master of Science degree in Information Systems Technology Management from The George Washington University in 2011 and his Bachelor of Science degree from Strayer University in 2008 majoring in computer programming. He also received Federal Chief Information Officer (CIO) professional certificate that is exclusively awarded by the United States Government.

Solomon always had a passion and a deep sense of giving back to his community and his beloved home country. He launched his TV show in 2012 to fulfill his dream of instilling academic and professional aspiration among the young in the field of science and technology. The show also embarks to bridge the big information gap by presenting very relevant and cutting edge scientific and technological advancements across several fields.

 

 

As a result of Solomon’s continuous desire and commitment to further spread the knowledge in the field of science and technology among his people, he is currently in the process of publishing and releasing his first book. The book will be one-of-its-kind Amharic publication covering several science and technology topics.

Solomon is left-handed and he has such a big passion and love for art and design. He loves doing interior design, enjoys fashion, plays musical instruments (piano and drums), likes to spend time with family and friends, and enjoys outdoor activities like jet skiing, skydiving, roller-coaster ride, swimming, biking, ground tennis, and soccer.

 

 

Find out more about Solomon at techtalkwithsolomon.com

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Messay is a community leader, script writer and film maker. He has organized and produced many local, national and international events over the past 15 years including a televised event called A.R.O.C. (Above Reproach On Campus), which featured artist such as Lecrae, The Afters, Lifehouse and many others.

Messay just had his directorial and acting debut of his feature film, Lambadina, which he also wrote, produced and acted in. Lambadina premiered in LA at the Pan African Film Festival earlier this year and won the Best Film Audience Choice Award. Lambadina will be premiering in Ethiopia this summer, and will be opening in various theaters around the US and film festivals all over the world. Currently Messay leads a youth and young adult christian ministry called Paradigm, in Los Angeles, CA.

 

 

Find out more about Lambadina at lambadinamovie.com

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