Sharif El-Badawi is the CEO of the newly established Dubai Future District Fund, an evergreen venture fund of funds and direct investment vehicle of the emirate of Dubai. The fund is anchored by Dubai Future Foundation and the Dubai International Financial Centre to invest in the Future of Finance and Future Economies with the aim of bolstering economic development in Dubai, the UAE and the broader region.

Previously, he co-founded and managed Plus Venture Capital (+VC), a leading seed stage investment firm in the Middle East and North Africa region, investing across sectors from seed to growth within the region and diaspora. Before that he was a founding managing partner of the first US-based venture capital firm with a dedicated fund for the MENA region and was the most active venture capital investor in MENA during its investment period from 2017-2020. In his role, he managed the 500 Startups MENA fund, 500 Falcons, which invested in over 180 startups across 15 countries.

In addition, Sharif serves on the board of San Francisco Bay Area based non-profit TechWadi where he was the chairman of the board from 2015-2019 helping build meaningful bridges between MENA startups and Silicon Valley. He also serves on several advisory boards for startups, organizations and governments in the MENA region and Silicon Valley.

Prior to his career in investing, Sharif was the Partner Lead to VCs and Startups at Google where he worked with top tier VCs and their most promising startups on strategies that bring all of Google to their businesses. Before joining the Global Partnerships team, he spent 5 years leading performance advertising strategy and solutions for Google's largest customers in North America covering Mobile, Search and Display ads.

He joined Google through the $750m acquisition of AdMob, the world’s leading mobile advertising network funded by Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners. Before AdMob, Sharif was a technologist and serial entrepreneur having founded or co-founded several companies in the Consumer Internet and B2B space over a twelve year period starting in 1998 with Website.com.

Sharif earned his MBA from UC Irvine Merage School of Business and his Bachelor’s of Science in Neuroscience from the UCLA. He recently relocated from his home state of California to Dubai with his wife and three children.