RANIA HOTEIT

 Rania Hoteit is a multi-award winning serial entrepreneur, global impact leader, author, executive advisor and public speaker with recognitions from the White House, United Nations, UK Parliament, The Global CEO Excellence Award and other prestigious honors. As founder and former CEO of ID4A Technologies, Rania has built a global company whose developments are widely adopted, disrupting traditional supply chains, revolutionizing production processes and creating significant environmental, economic and social impacts worldwide. Under her leadership, ID4A Technologies has been recognized by the White House Office of Science and Technology for 'Fostering The Development of Advanced Manufacturing in the USA as The World'; named among the 2016 “Best Entrepreneurial Companies in America” by Entrepreneur magazine; honored on the Elite 2018 Inc. 5000 List of “America’s Fastest Growing Private Companies”; awarded the 2019 Real Leaders “100 Top Impact Companies” Award and "World's Best Emerging Design Technology Company" Award by LUX Leading Designers Awards. In 2020, ID4A received the Technology Innovator Award by Corporate Vision for "Best Automated Manufacturing Technology Company in the USA" and the North America Business Award for "Best Automation Technology Software Solutions." In 2021, ID4A received the "Best in Business Services and Manufacturing Technologies" Award by the San Francisco Awards and was honored by Fast Company's World Changing Ideas Awards for the company's innovative Pandemic Response Initiative. In 2021, ID4A was honored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as a finalist for "Best Economic Opportunity and Empowerment Program" presented by the Citizens Awards which honor purpose-driven businesses for their inspiring leadership in solving the world’s biggest challenges.

Through her commitments to the Sustainable Development Goals, more than 1600 businesses adopted sustainable practices, more than 285,000 people gained employment in industrial sectors, and more than 900,000 people were provided secure working environments. Additionally, she has contributed to reducing labor exploitation in global production pipelines by improving the skills and working conditions of nearly 2 million people through 2021. Rania has been featured in notable publications including Forbes, Huffington Post, Inc, Entrepreneur, Le Commerce Du Levant, and she was named alongside Oprah Winfrey among 7 Disruptive Women Paving The Way For Success in 2022 by Disrupt Magazine.

Awards and honors

In 2016, Rania received the "Ambassador of The Year" Award by Blossom Wealth Management for propelling entrepreneurship, innovation, and empowering women. In 2017, she was recognized by the United Nations at the Global People Summit for addressing human rights abuses in the global production pipeline, and leveraging automation, Ai and Robotics to reduce global exploitation of labor. In a Silicon Valley survey by Parazim, she was recognized alongside Melinda Gates, Sheryl Sandberg, Malala Yousafzai and other global leaders 'who have successfully built outstanding brands'. Rania is also one of the only 50 global women leaders from around the world who are featured in “50 Inspiring Voices of Migrant Women: From Struggle to Success”, an inspirational book that showcases successful migrant entrepreneurs as role models. The book was launched at the UK Parliament where she was awarded “Outstanding Achievement in Her Career and Her Contribution as a Migrant Woman in the USA”. At the end of 2018, she was nominated for the first-ever Lebanon Impact Awards under the patronage of His Excellency the Prime Minister. Rania has been featured in the Huffington Post, Forbes, Entrepreneur, The Economist, and more. She was named among the '50 Most Prominent Influencers' by Thrive Global, and was recognized by Inc Magazine among 'America's Top Entrepreneurs' who are leading the 'Most Inspiring Companies of 2018'. In 2019, she was recognized among the Top 100 Impact Leaders who are applying capitalism for greater profit and a greater good by Real Leaders magazine; and was awarded the Global CEO Excellence Award for “Best Automation Technology CEO”. In 2021, Rania received theSTEP Award honoring women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Production who exemplify leadership excellence in their careers. She also received The Global Business Insight Awards as the one and only winner for “Most Outstanding Automation Technology CEO 2021”. Most recently, Rania was named alongside Oprah Winfrey among 7 Disruptive Women Paving The Way For Success in 2022 by Disrupt Magazine.

Established Track Record

Rania is a proven senior executive and innovation leader with 14 years of success across automotive, aerospace, consumer products, robotics, advanced manufacturing, and technology industries. Leveraging an extensive experience in business, design and technology entrepreneurship, she has a tangible track record of successfully leading teams, implementing new technologies, developing innovative products, creative processes, and new business models. Throughout her executive career, She has worked in cross-disciplinary collaborations with leading global companies across design, technology, and business innovation, including Steelcase, GE, JPL, NASA, BMW, Samsung, Nokia, Walmart, Amtrak and many more. She has also had led many Research and Development (R&D) collaborations with research laboratories held by private companies on proprietary projects and innovative processes in advanced manufacturing and robotic technologies. She demonstrated exemplary leadership by starting and operating multiple new businesses, turning technologies into viable startups, transforming markets, and creating radical changes within her industry and beyond through her executive leadership and technology entrepreneurship; as well as through her advisory and consultative capacity to guide entrepreneurs, startup founders, organization leaders and teams on innovation transformation and business growth. As a technology entrepreneur and innovator, Rania pioneered the invention of multiple systems, manufacturing automation applications and robotic technologies that radically transformed design-to-manufacturing processes in automotive, aerospace, electronics, consumer products and other industries. and increased the efficiency and sustainability of manufacturing products. She is responsible for starting, growing and selling two technology businesses successfully prior to founding ID4A Technologies: Anoxic Labs Inc, an end-to-end design innovation and technology product development company, and SKU the world's first technology platform to provide cutting edge 3D printing technologies for the development of innovative products across industrial applications. She led her current company ID4A Technologies to the forefront of technology innovation in advanced manufacturing, automation software and robotic technologies, and grew it to a global business that specializes in end-to-end product development and manufacturing automation solutions that leverage exponential technologies such as Ai, 3D printing, machine vision, and industrial robots. Under her leadership, ID4A was recognized by the White House for fostering the development of advanced manufacturing and robotic technologies in the US as in the world, was ranked as one of the “Best Entrepreneurial Companies in America” by Entrepreneur magazine amongst only 360 honorees, recognizing ID4A as a company that mastered impact, innovation, growth, and leadership on the 360 List. In 2018, ID4A received the most prestigious award in business by being honored on the Elite 2018 Inc. 5000 List of "America's Fastest Growing Private Companies", now sharing a pedigree with a pedigree with Intuit, Zappos, Under Armour, Microsoft, Timberland, GoPro, CLIF Bar, Patagonia, Oracle, Grubhub, and other companies that became household names. 

Contributions to Technology and industry innovation

Rania has demonstrated leadership by undertaking sustained technical work that covers important new ground in advanced manufacturing technologies; and the breadth, depth, and sustained nature of her work as a technologist and a leader in her field had tremendous impact. She pioneered innovation in advanced manufacturing and robotic automation technologies by inventing multiple systems, processes and methods that radically transformed design-to-manufacturing processes. In more details about her technical work, her method for “hyper-prototyping”revolutionized 3D Printing technologies. By employing a rigorous exchange between computational design, industrial robots and additive manufacturing, she created a system that can build pliable, reconfigurable 3D printed objects that are easy to control and manipulate even after they’ve been 3D printed. She developed material blends consisting of polymers and composites to create a substrate that is pliable and transformative until being fixed. By scripting vectorial geometry networks, programming materials with algorithms, and applying robotic motion, her method eliminated the need for mechanical joints, and allowed every 3D print the ability to take on multiple forms through a wide range of controlled robotic manipulations. Leveraging exponential technologies and combining computational design, machine vision,Ai, 3D printing, programmable materials and robotics, her work proved to disrupt traditional supply chains; expedite production cycles and increase the sustainability and efficiency of manufacturing products. Her innovative approaches became widely adopted in manufacturing processes for top-secret proprietary applications in automotive, aerospace, electronics, consumer products and other industries; which positioned her company at the forefront of design technology. Through advancing manufacturing, Ai, and robotic technologies, Rania advocates for social change to reduce global exploitation of labor, child labor, and women's rights violations in production pipelines, affecting millions of people around the world. Rania was recognized at The Economist Innovation Summit 2018 amongst highly distinguished global innovation business leaders, entrepreneurs, thinkers, and technologists; where she discussed opportunities and challenges for the expansion of digital transformation in the region, and shared her strategies to leverage new technologies, and to change policies to enable the growth of technology in Africa. Her work extended to support the next-generation of innovators in Africa by advising tech startups and organizations on implementing transformative technologies, and developing innovative products and new business models for regional markets.

Impact on women and the global STEM community 

Rania has deliberately acted to increase women’s impact, representation, and effectiveness in technology in various ways; and her work to support and develop the next generation of powerful entrepreneurs has a global impact on the community of women in tech within the USA and around the world.Amongst her initiatives to support the technical education of girls and advancement of women in technical careers and leadership, Rania consults early stage companies and organizations to build and implement strategies to break stigmas in their workplace and ensure equality amongst their teams. She also extends her expertise to advise and mentor female-founded startups, facilitates investment and career opportunities through global competitions and investors pitches, and conducts entrepreneurship educational courses and workshops for accelerators and startup programs around the world. In 2017, she joined WeMENA, a bold initiative by the World Bank that aimed to accelerate 200 women-led businesses with mentorship, business skills, training, and funding to grow their businesses. As a judge and mentor, she assessed the technology products, markets and impact, and potential innovative business models that contribute to building resilient societies in 8 cities across the MENA region. In collaboration with The Expat Woman, she joined the WomenHack initiative to end the gender gap in tech by engaging more girls in STEM, enabling companies to hire and retain diverse candidates, and helping women to connect with mentors, recruiters and investors throughout the All-Women hackathon and competition process. In conjunction with the Founder Institute and Parazim, the nominee joined forces to tackle gender parity problem in Silicon Valley and advance gender equality by supporting female founders in the tech community and providing them with mentorship and opportunity to pitch their startup vision to investors on the Zimvest Startup Pitch Series. She joined the Global Entrepreneurship Summit 2016 as a judge and mentor on the Women Technologies Hackathon, an effort on behalf of U.S. Department of State and IDEO where she supported women in tech to develop innovative solutions for global challenges that threaten gender equity and women's safety around the world. She joined The 2016 Global Women in STEM Conference and Awards on an exclusive competition for women-led businesses to provide innovative and scalable early stage technology startups an unparalleled opportunity to present their ideas in front of top global investors. By providing her expertise to assess applications, evaluate proposals, and to mentor entrepreneurs to turn their technology ideas into viable products, sustainable businesses and investment-worthy propositions, hundreds of women continue to gain visibility and acquire investments to take their startups to the next level due to her efforts.

Recognized influencer and global impact leader

Rania is broadly recognized as a role model with global influence through her industry innovation leadership, technology entrepreneurship and social impact initiatives. She was highlighted at the Wonder Women Tech as a pioneer who created impact in STEAM industries and have paved the way in innovation and entrepreneurialism for future generations. She was featured in an interview with Huffington Post where was named “a woman to watch- inspiring beyond belief.” In recognition of her leadership and significant contributions to support and advance technical education in high schools across the USA, the nominee was selected by the US department of Education amongst few technology leaders from the nation's top technology organizations to judge and mentor on the CTE Makeover Challenge, a competition initiated by the government in 2016 to fund public schools across the country to design makerspaces that strengthen the next-generation career and technical skills. Rania was selected by The White House out of 10,000 women candidates from the US and around the world to join theThe United State of Women summit where she was recognized as “Nominated Change Maker” for her commitments to improve the lives of women and girls around the world, and for initiating changes that target key gender gaps and equality issues in society that make a powerful difference in our collective future, in the presence of highly distinguished activists, leaders, entrepreneurs, and politicians from around the world, including President Barack Obama,Vice President Joe Biden, First Lady Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey,Warren Buffet, and Megan Smith. In the presence of 100 highly selected organization leaders, innovators, educators and entrepreneurs from across the nation, and high-profile government officials including the US CTO Megan Smith, Deputy Administrator of NASA Dava Newman, Deputy Director for Technology and Innovation at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and others, Rania was recognized at The White House “Champions of Change” event for her significant contributions to empower, support and advance technical education and careers, and for her industry innovation leadership that foster the development of advanced manufacturing in the United States as the World. At the World Maker Faire 2016, she was recognized amongst top industry leaders, innovators, and influencers for serving on the CTE Makeover Challenge, supporting education in STEAM areas, and developing models and platforms to bring career and technical skills to schools across the country. The nominee was recognized amongst 8 inspiring visionaries and thought leaders from around the globe at the Flight 2 Freedom Summit where she received the "Ambassador of The Year" 2016 Award for propelling entrepreneurship and innovation through her business leadership and initiatives in social impact supporting education, gender equality, and women empowerment. On International Women’s Day, she was recognized at the 2017 Inaugural State of Women Summit for her contributions on the cutting edge of philanthropy and investing at the micro and macro levels for causes and initiatives uplifting women and girls, and for her leadership in the innovation and impact economy of empowering women; and she was celebrated amongst the 4 senior executives from leading organizations who have successfully leveled the playing field for advancing women and girls. The nominee was recognized by The International Association of Innovation Professionals amongst the best minds in innovation worldwide at Innova-Con 2017, from thought leaders, design thinkers, engineers, entrepreneurs, cutting-edge researchers and industry experts who are dedicated to the advancement of global innovation. She was recognized by the UN for her contributions in technology innovation to fight human rights abuse and global exploitation of labor in production pipelines, and was amongst 55 highly selected global leaders to speak at The Global People's Summit and Social Good, organized during the UN General Assembly to explore social innovation and disruptive technology to address some of the most challenging issues of our time; where she addressed global production and manufacturing, trends in human rights abuse, bondage and forced labor, child labor, and how AI and Robotics can impact a reduction of exploitation globally. The nominee was featured in Forbes representing women leaders in STEM where she shared her experiences with sexism as a Tech CEO leading a global business. She was later named "Hero” by Forbes for standing against sexism in tech and empowering women in STEM. She was amongst 5 high-profile women leaders from top global tech companies who were were invited to the Global Career Summit 2017 as role models to share their success stories on "Breaking the Glass Ceiling in Silicon Valley”. She was recognized alongside Melinda Gates, Sheryl Sandberg, Malala Yousafzai, Emma Watson and other powerful global women leaders 'who have successfully built outstanding brands’ in a survey published by Parazim; an organization dedicated to champion the most effective, extraordinary, and powerful women in the world.The nominee was recognized amongst the 50 highly selected women leaders and authors from around the globe who are featured in "50 Inspiring Voices of Migrant Women: From Struggle To Success”, an inspirational and educational book that aims to change the way media portrays immigration by sharing positive success stories that show migrant entrepreneurs as role models. She was honored during the book launch event at the UK Parliament in London in the presence of high profile global business leaders, politicians, and public figures; where she received an Award 'for outstanding achievement in her career and her contribution as a migrant woman in the USA' from the UK Parliament presented to her by Mirela Sula, Founder of Global Woman, and Seema Malhotra, UK MP and Labour Party Politician. In 2018 she was named one of "Top 50 Most Prominent Influencers" in Ariana Huffington's Thrive Global Magazine; and was distinguished as one of "America's Top Entrepreneurs" by Inc. Magazine. 

company overview

ID4A Technologies is a global technology company that specializes in the design and development of customized automation technologies that leverage AI, machine learning, machine vision, 3D printing and industrial robotics to increase efficiency, accuracy, flexibility, and scalability while reducing time, cost, and waste across the entire manufacturing cycle. The company also provides end-to-end systems integration and product development services by collaborating with Fortune 500 companies, corporate R&D labs, and startups. Aside from the sustainability and economic benefits of our solutions, ID4A is vested in girls education and women empowerment in STEM fields, and aims to eradicate the exploitation of labor in global production pipelines. In partnership with international organizations and clients in over 22 countries, ID4A impacted nearly 2M people around the world thus far. 

In 2016, ID4A Technologies ranked on the Entrepreneur 360 list of the “Best Entrepreneurial Companies in America” and was recognized by the White House Office of Technology Policy for “ Fostering The Development of Advanced Manufacturing”. In 2018, ID4A was an honoree on the Elite 2018 Inc. 5000 List of “America’s Fastest Growing Private Companies.” ID4A was recognized among the winners of the 2019 Real Leaders “Top 100 Impact Companies” Awards — the world's first ranking of positive impact companies that are driving a dynamic segment of the economy and applying capitalism for greater profit and a greater good. The company was also awarded the “World's Best Emerging Design Technology Company" by LUX Leading Designer 2019 Awards. Most recently, ID4A Technologies received the 2020 “Best in Business” Award by the San Francisco Awards Program.

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