Amidst life’s shifting landscapes and personal hardships, some people learn not only to adapt, but also to turn each struggle into fuel for purpose. Douaa Kayed is one name among them. From a vibrant upbringing in Abu Dhabi with a close-knit Palestinian family to a life that has included Dubai, Jeddah, Toronto, and now Riyadh, her tale is one of resilience, reinvention, and unwavering trust in movement, both physical and emotional. When the world slowed during the pandemic, she accelerated towards her destiny. What started as online exercise sessions in her Canadian basement has grown into DCoach, a thriving health firm founded on balance, discipline, and human connection. She is a Guinness World Record holder, Master Trainer, Boxing Coach, and Harvard-certified Lifestyle and Wellness Coach who has turned personal resilience into a global platform for empowerment. Her concept goes beyond fitness; it’s about leading oneself before leading others, using time as a currency for success, and putting health first. Her narrative is more than just lifting weights or setting records; it’s about elevating spirits, regaining confidence, and demonstrating that with focus and faith, life’s ceaseless motion can mold not only the body but also the soul. Roots and Resilience Born and raised in Abu Dhabi, Douaa grew up in a large Palestinian family that valued togetherness. She lived with her parents, seven sisters, and two brothers, experiencing the vibrant chaos and joy that comes with a big family. Her childhood sparkled with laughter and friendship until her father’s death shattered that security. The family persevered, each sibling finding their own path forward through the darkness of loss. Her path led through education and early marriage. At nineteen, she married, balancing university coursework with the responsibilities of a new wife. By twenty, she welcomed her daughter Tia while still pursuing her Bachelor’s degree in History at Beirut Arab University. She graduated in 2005, proving that young motherhood need not derail academic ambitions. The young family relocated to Dubai, where she gave birth to their first son, Marwan, in 2006. Life continued its pattern of movement and adaptation. Her husband’s career took them to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where they spent several years building their life. In 2014, they welcomed their second son, Omar, eight years after their first son’s birth. The constant relocations across countries and cities made maintaining friendships difficult. When the family returned to Dubai in 2015, she cherished the small circle of friends whose children attended the same school as her three kids. This stability lasted until 2019, when a career opportunity prompted another major transition and this time it was Canada. Finding Purpose in the Pandemic Summer 2019 marked a turning point. Arriving in Canada, Douaa Kayed launched her professional career in fitness and wellness. She pursued this new direction with characteristic determination, even as the COVID-19 pandemic complicated everything. While others saw lockdowns as obstacles, she recognized opportunity. She transformed her basement into a training studio, offering fitness sessions to neighbors. She conducted online classes for her sisters and extended family members. The pandemic gave her something invaluable: time to crystallize her vision, complete certifications, and map her professional trajectory. “COVID for me was not that bad; it was the beginning of my career in the field of health and fitness,” she reflects. She utilized every moment at home, completing course after course, attending workshops, and building expertise. By summer 2022, she had earned multiple certifications as a Master Trainer, Boxing Coach, and Personal Trainer. She worked at UFC Gym in Mississauga and several other Toronto facilities, constantly learning and refining her craft. The pandemic also witnessed something remarkable. She trained herself for a Guinness World Record attempt. On December 13, 2021, in Montreal, Quebec, she achieved the record for most full contact knee strikes using alternate legs in one minute by a female, 132 strikes, surpassing the previous record of 120. The achievement symbolized her approach to life: set ambitious goals, train relentlessly, execute flawlessly. The Coach Who Coaches Douaa Kayed’s passion centers on words like success, ambition, goals, and achievement. She channels this passion into fitness, health, wellness, and boxing and in fields where she helps others pursue healthy lifestyles. Her website, DCoach.me, synthesizes her diverse experiences into a comprehensive coaching platform. She also develops her own sportswear brand called YALLA, which expresses her fitness philosophy. The brand name itself, Arabic for “let’s go” which captures her energetic approach. YALLA embodies her belief that everyone deserves access to healthy living, regardless of background or circumstances. Her coaching philosophy emerges from personal experience. She watches her mother manage type 2 diabetes without medication, relying instead on healthy eating and walking daily to maintain blood sugar levels. Her mother grew up in a household that emphasized wellness, healthy nutrition, and herbal remedies. This example inspired her to explore nutrition and exercise more deeply, eventually committing herself to help others achieve similar wellness. “I love helping others live a healthy lifestyle and help them to achieve their goals,” she explains. She also draws satisfaction from her own self-realization as a successful woman who has overcome numerous obstacles. Yet she observes a critical gap in her industry. Many people lack awareness about coaching’s importance and the transformative role coaches play. She emphasizes that even coaches need coaches, everyone benefits from having someone who serves as a mirror, revealing blind spots and illuminating paths for growth. “Having a coach in your life is like having a mirror to help you see yourself correctly and to see what aspects you should work on improving,” she notes. This awareness helps individuals unleash potential and reach goals they might otherwise miss. Balancing Acts and Tough Choices Managing multiple roles of wife, mother of three, athlete, trainer, student, and business owner demands extraordinary discipline. Douaa Kayed acknowledges the difficulty frankly. She learned boxing, participated in marathons including the Los Angeles Marathon and four half-marathons in Toronto, worked as a trainer, and pursued continuous education simultaneously. The turning point came when she recognized the

In Africa’s endless expanse, growth is drawn in every deal, every handshake, and every dream that challenges to remake what is possible. Even on congested streets of city thoroughfares and distant havens of rural villages, banking does not do business as impersonal figures on a page but as lifelines- for hope, for dignity, for tomorrow. Its pipes vibrate with possibility, carrying hope to millions whose lives it touches. But every innovation, and every breakthrough, beats a heart. Because the true story of Africa’s banking revolution isn’t in servers or code, but in people like Emmanuel Morka. He is a technology idealist who brings tech out of cold code and into living legacy. The financial history of this continent is a tapestry of disappointment and hope, one that has been sewn by people who find promise in every failure. Regulations change, walls groan, and hope is constantly reborn with every purchaser. It is this delicacy that is the backdrop on which the future is painted, not randomly but by hearts of bravery. Emmanuel Morka overmaps these waters; his existence is a passage containing each fleeting instant of possibility, bringing institutions across lines to a richer, human meaning. His strategy erases the distinction between innovation and humanitarianism, never satisfied to let advancement be reserved for the privileged few. Technology is a tool, modernization an adaptation, and each move, from placing next-generation leadership in position to soothing a customer’s anxiety, creates a legacy larger than quarterly objectives. And in every team training, every deployment rhythm, Emmanuel Morka’s testimony bears witness that change is never an individual drama. It’s a community beat that raises the entire community and lights bright skies. His style blurs the edge between innovation and empathy, never willing to sit idly by as progress is the privilege of the rich. Technology in his world is a servant, modernization a bridge, and every move, from mentoring the next generation’s chief to soothing a customer’s anxiety, creates a legacy above quarterly objectives. And in the beat of every team session, every deployment, Emmanuel’s tale testifies that change is never one man’s drama. It is a shared beat that lifts entire communities and lights up bright skies. A Catalyst of Change Emmanuel’s journey is coloured by both rigour and creativity. It’s an orbit where discipline meets imagination. As Regional Chief Information Officer at Access Bank, his presence is not just felt in projects completed but in futures awakened. His teams see him not only as a master of Oracle databases or project management but as the mind that helps them blend what is strict with what is swift. It is his influence that plants possibility in the cracks of old systems, nourishing new talent and leadership that refuses to stand still. Career spans are measured in years, but Emmanuel Morka’s impact ripples in moments- when a back-end engineer learns that compliance and invention are allies, when a rural entrepreneur finds banking tools at his fingertips, and when an aspiring technocrat finds a mentor who listens and accelerates potential rather than guarding it. Creating the Future: Rigour and Agility With more than 18 years of shaping Africa’s financial technology, Emmanuel Morka wields two powerful tools: technical rigour and creative speed. He designs teams like dual engines: one grounded in the security and reliability required by banks, the other fuelled by rapid prototyping and empathy for customers’ daily realities. His recipe is simple yet radical: stability is built at the core with agility on the surface; compliance is not repression, but the scaffolding for innovation. For foundational systems, Emmanuel Morka insists on precision. Yet he welcomes sprints and iterations for personal banking apps and solutions serving the self-employed or small businesses. His people learn to embrace DevSecOps, refusing to see rigidity and flexibility as enemies. When rolling out major features, Emmanuel drives the backend relentlessly while empowering the frontend team to co-create with users, proving every day that inclusion means involving people at every stage, not just at launch. His own argument is straightforward: significant change only happens when the most resilient core comes together with empowered, agile experts on the front line that interact with customers. This duality, the engineer’s discipline fused with openness to change, defines his hallmark. Leadership Beyond Borders and Barriers Emmanuel Morka’s vision is not constrained by geographical lines. His leadership thrives on adaptation, transforming with every market he serves. If the regulatory waters in the Gulf demand speed, he orchestrates compliance at a light pace. In Africa, where power can flicker and broadband is often fragile, he invents ways to centralize authority until local talent blossoms. He studies every market for its nuances, respects its limitations, and looks for opportunity in every constraint. His greatest innovation may be his human-centred philosophy. Emmanuel Morka knows the future is built on more than systems. It is carved by people who feel ownership, not just obligation. He makes it his mission to mentor and unleash talent, turning every hire into a possible leader and every setback into a lesson shared. His leadership is adaptive not just in policy, but in the hearts he cultivates. Colleagues often recall how his mentorship turns into an incubator for creativity. In markets where resources are limited, he teaches by rolling up his sleeves, working side by side, imparting resilience and grit to recruits. It is not uncommon for his mentees to rise, later leading their own projects across Africa’s technology corridors. Strategic Choices: Modernization That Matters Emmanuel Morka approaches modernization like an artist, making every upgrade count and every dollar matter. He judges legacy systems by how they touch lives: Do they fuel revenue? Improve experience? Free teams to innovate? If a system is a costly drain or a roadblock to genuine collaboration, it moves up the queue for transformation. In Ghana, he prioritizes middleware, a decision that unlocks easy mobile money and fintech partnerships, allowing rural women and small businesses to transact as easily as city executives. Long-term vision guides him, but each decision

Turning Tides―Transforming Times: Tale of a Titan It needs some of the most prominent leaders to drive change to transform unsustainable times into sustainable ones. Resolute human will has always turned tides in humanity’s favor while battling turbulent waves of the passing moments and raging storms of personal, local, and global challenges. That’s how these visionary minds shaped the present events while directing the course of tomorrow for a better future. As the Director-Global Sustainability at the d&b group – a global leader in event technology comprised of d&b audiotechnik GmbH & Co. KG and d&b solutions Ltd. – Robert Trebus is redefining this era by showing how innovation, data, and collaboration transform live events into sustainable growth engines. When you think about transformation, most people imagine it as a recent phenomenon. But for Robert Trebus, Director Global Sustainability at the d&b group – a global leader in event technology, comprised of d&b audiotechnik GmbH & Co. KG and d&b solutions Ltd. – transformation has been a professional constant for more than three decades. His career has spanned the introduction of innovations in the entertainment market, the creation of new business models, and the steady advancement of sustainability as a core business driver. “Transformation in the economy is often perceived as something new,” Robert Trebus reflects, “but I’ve been actively shaping it for over 30 years. Today, sustainability and digitalization are the strongest forces driving this change. My mission is simple: to future-proof the event industry.” From early on, he was fascinated by the dual role of technology and innovation – as both a source of challenges and a key to solutions. That conviction led him to focus his work where impact is greatest: at the intersection of industry, regulation, and society. Through his involvement in national and international standardization bodies, associations, and projects, Robert Trebus has helped make sustainability measurable, comparable, and practically applicable. Today, at the d&b group, he is responsible for steering the global sustainability agenda – not just for the company, but as part of a larger effort to shape the future of the entire live event industry. His vision is bold yet pragmatic: events must continue to create powerful experiences, but without leaving deep scars on the environment. Beyond Compliance: Embedding Sustainability in Strategy Unlike many executives who treat sustainability as a compliance function, Robert Trebus sees his role as far more expansive. “My job is about shaping transformation holistically,” he explains. This means managing regulatory frameworks such as ESG reporting, the EU Taxonomy, and the Green Deal, while simultaneously developing strategies for the circular economy, climate neutrality, and sustainable product design. His team creates systems that streamline internal processes and deliver transparency to customers, investors, and partners. His guiding principle: sustainability must be embedded at the very heart of corporate strategy – not as an add-on, but as a driver of innovation, competitiveness, and long-term relevance. Recognition Built on Consistency Recognition has followed Robert Trebus in recent years, but he is quick to emphasize that awards and honors do not emerge from isolated actions. They are the product of years of consistent work: leading international projects, building networks, shaping standards, and bridging politics, industry, and science. “For me personally, such recognition confirms that consistent efforts in standards, strategy, and innovation are not only seen, but valued,” he says. “For the d&b group – comprising d&b audiotechnik GmbH & Co. KG and d&b solutions Ltd. – it is also a strong signal: we are not only a manufacturer and service provider, but an active driver of sustainable transformation in the global event industry.” Leading by Balance: Vision and Precision Robert Trebus is clear about the essence of sustainability leadership: balancing vision with reality. His principle is succinct – think big, act with precision. That balance requires a deep understanding of the value chain, from suppliers and partners to customers and policymakers. “Each stakeholder has unique needs and unique capabilities. Only a holistic approach creates a robust foundation for sustainable growth,” he notes. Visions may inspire, but they only generate impact when translated into values, processes, metrics, and action. Robert Trebus emphasizes governance and systems that tie long-term goals to measurable short-term progress. He sees himself as both an inspirer and a bridge-builder – translating the language of politics and science into the operational reality of a global market leader. “In this way,” he says, “transformation is not only promised – it is delivered.” Culture Change: From Obligation to Pride Sustainability has already reshaped d&b group’s culture. At the leadership level, market transformation commands top attention. Customers’ sustainability goals are understood in detail and supported with tailored solutions. At the team level, sustainability has shifted from an obligation to a source of pride and motivation. But Robert Trebus underscores that cultural change doesn’t happen by chance – it requires structure. Processes have been continually refined, sustainability targets embedded in strategy, and mandatory training programs established. The result: sustainability is no longer an abstract concept but a lived practice, anchored in decision-making at every level of the company. Innovation in Practice: Sustain Symphony Robert Trebus’s vision for innovation is clear: make sustainability not only possible, but accessible and scalable. The company’s flagship initiative is SustainSymphony, an ESG platform offering tools for organizers, venues, and partners to measure, manage, and report their sustainability performance transparently. It reflects international standards but remains practical and user-friendly. Importantly, it is freely accessible with lower barriers and encourages widespread adoption. The impact is already visible. Events that once viewed sustainability as a cost factor now recognize it as a value driver. Data and transparency have unlocked new opportunities – from operational improvements to access to green finance. “Sustainability is shifting from a reporting exercise to a true growth engine for the industry,” Trebus notes. The Power of Data and International Standards For Robert Trebus, credible sustainability starts with robust data. He acknowledges that this is often a major hurdle, but emphasizes that the effort quickly pays off. High-quality data creates long-term