About
Fourteen years of building things that had to work in places that do not forgive a bad plan.
Mohannad Hesham founded Life From Water in Egypt in 2011, at twenty-three, because villages an hour from where he grew up had no drinkable water. The decade that followed was treatment units, boreholes, pipelines and household connections across Egypt, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, along with the unglamorous parts around them: partnerships, field teams, procurement, permits, and the evidence to show any of it worked.
Somewhere in that, the organisation started needing software nobody would build for it, so he built it. Attendance and payroll first, then a finance desk, later a system for the water plants themselves. The AI work grew out of that, as the next tool for the same problems.
Most of his week now goes on teaching and advising on AI, and the rest is still water. The common thread is that a tool only matters once it has survived real people, real processes and real constraints.
What he is responsible for.
- Since 2011Founder & CEO — Life From Water
- Since 2020Co-Founder & Board Member — Specialised Egyptian Federation for Water & Wastewater
- Since 2023AI Trainer — Meska AI
- CurrentCo-Founder — Mohandes AI
- NewestFounder — Impact Anchor
Fellowships and awards.
- FellowshipAshoka Fellow, elected for systems change
- FellowshipPerplexity Business Fellow
- AwardGlobal winner, World Bank & Wharton Ideas for Action
- AwardGlobal first place, resilience track, ClimateLaunchpad
- AwardFirst place, Misr El Kheir Award
- ProgrammeTech to the Rescue, AI for Changemakers graduate
Where he has spoken.
- TEDxSpeaker, “AI: From Fear to Impact”
- TEDxYouthKeynote
- J-PAL MENASpeaker, five-year celebration
- UN ESCWASpeaker, Arab Forum for Sustainable Development
- AI4DSpeaker, AI for Development conference
- Sahara ExpoSpeaker
- Watrex ExpoSpeaker
- USAID – AUCSpeaker
- Institut FrançaisPanel, Climate Talks
- COP28Attended
What people ask him to talk about
- 01Getting a whole organisation using AI, not just a few enthusiasts
- 02Keeping human judgment in the loop
- 03Using AI responsibly in practice rather than on paper
- 04Building your own AI tools in-house
- 05AI in development and public-interest work
- 06AI, water and climate
Education.
- MBAEdinburgh Business School, Heriot-Watt University
- BScStrategic Management & Innovation Technology, German University in Cairo
- AlsoTrained in counselling and psychotherapy
Two ways in.
Speaking, teaching, press and writing reach him directly, by email or LinkedIn, whichever suits you.
AI work for an organisation is usually better through one of the companies. Industry and engineering work goes to Mohandes AI; organisational adoption is what Impact Anchor is for.