Aman Merchant

A mission-driven serial parallel entrepreneur, futurist, coach and angel investor with 25+ years experience across 12 ventures in education, social impact and disruptive innovation, Aman is the Chief Provocateur at Radicle (strategic futures lab & innovation studio with offices in UAE, UK, Europe, & Canada), passionate about transforming industries, cities and lives through ideating and launching ambitious platforms for solving the wicked system problems that challenge humanity today. Currently co-curating RewirEd (global education summit) as part of an engagement with Dubai Cares, he just launched the MENAP region’s first Edtech collective (ReimaginED Collective), previously managed a Global Grand Challenges program for Expo2020 & a disruptive innovation program for Dubai Airport Free Zone, curated Abundance 360 Dubai (CEO Summit with Singularity University) with Dr Peter Diamandis, launched Epiq360 (regional ecommerce & coaching platform for wellness/longevity/peak performance) and co-founded & led Impact Hub Dubai (global coworking & incubation network for social entrepreneurs).

Leading Concepts, his first entrepreneurial venture in 1999, pioneered executive education in the region, with exclusive partnerships with leading business schools including Stanford, Columbia & Michigan, with a regional alumni audience that exceeded two thousand senior executives. In 2002, he launched & ran the region’s 1st ever performance consultancy Paradigmz through an exclusive regional alliance with Mercer, with the building of the HR organizations at The Executive Office of the Ruler of Dubai, and at Petro Rabigh, a joint venture between Saudi Aramco & Sumitomo, being two of the most remarkable engagements. In the late 2000s, he co-founded multiple leadership organizations, including INOS (world’s 1st global leadership strategy consortium), 10x Futures (breakthrough leadership advisory firm for C-level teams) as well as Future Leadership Academy (greenhouse for preparing future world leaders, thinkers & entrepreneurs aged 3-16).

A member of both the Young Presidents Organisation (YPO) and the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) where he served as past UAE Chapter President & Regional Director, Aman is the regional champion for the Technology, Global Family Business & Financial Services Networks at YPO. He also served on the board of the Global Agenda Council on Emerging Multinationals at the World Economic Forum and was part of the investment committee at a $100m global impact fund (ExpoLive), and also at in5, the leading innovation hub in Dubai.

Aman holds a 1st Class Masters (Hons) Degree from Oxford University in Politics, Philosophy & Economics (PPE) & is a Stanford Business School alum, having served on the UAE alumni boards of both. A London School of Economics alum as well as the Entrepreneur Mentor in Residence at London Business School since 2014, he has presented multiple times to aspiring student entrepreneur audiences & is himself a long-time student of the world’s #1 entrepreneur coaching program at Strategic Coach. With lifelong learning being a core value, he recently became the MENA region’s first Impact Investing Fellow at AVPN (Asian Venture Philanthropy Network), the UAE’s 1st Fellow with OnDeck Edtech as well as a certified Peak Performance coach (with Distinction) from the Flow Genome Project.

An acclaimed writer, he often muses on Medium about system change, moonshots, strategic futures, impact investing, innovation in education and of course, his pet topics of flow and high performance for entrepreneurs and change-makers. He loves hosting global conversations and apart from nearly 50 YouTube episodes on peak performance, recently concluded co-hosting a 10 part weekly series on reimagining global education on Clubhouse.

Most importantly, he’s a father to two intelligently rebellious teenage boys, that he needs his years of meditation practice as well as his 5th Dan in Shotokan karate to manage the yin & yang J.