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About the Author
Zaid Hassan
Zaid was born in 1973 in London. When he was seven years old, his parents decided to pack up and move the family, including his twin sister and younger sister, to India. The original plan was to go for two years and get a little experience of the wider world. Instead, they were gone twelve years, traveling the world, moving to Bombay, then to New Delhi, and then finally to the emirate of Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates.
Zaid came back to the UK in 1992, where he studied physics as an undergrad for a little while (spending most of his time in the lab messing around the with pre-web Internet). His familiarity with the Internet, IP protocols, and rudimentary HTML skills sucked him out of the physics department into the dot-com boom. He worked for a number of years as a freelancer, eventually setting up his own production company, Anthropic, for a few years before working for a NASDAQ listed dot-com. He ended his tech career as Chief Actualisation Officer for a nonprofit tech start-up.
These experiences led him to the State of the World Forum in San Francisco in 1999. Here Zaid connected with hundreds of activists, social entrepreneurs, ambitious start-ups, world leaders, and young people all dedicated to tackling society’s most challenging problems. A year later, he found himself working as part of a small global team for a peer-learning youth group called Pioneers of Change. During his two years at Pioneers, he helped run learning programs in countries as diverse as Brazil, India, Egypt, and Mexico, focused on creating systemic change. This marked the beginning of over a decade and a half of experimentation in running social labs.
In 2007 Zaid cofounded Reos Partners. He rides a single-speed (non-fixie) Genesis bike the color of a sunset.
Zaid currently lives in Oxford with his wife, Mia, and young son, Ashar, who wants to know why we ask questions.
He tweets @zaidhassan.
