Sumaya Kazi is an internationally recognized innovator, leader, speaker and award-winning entrepreneur. For her passion and success around her endeavors, Sumaya has been recognized by BusinessWeek as one of America’s “Best Young Entrepreneurs,” CNN as a “Young Person Who Rocks,” Silicon Valley Business Journal as a “Woman of Influence,” and most recently by UTNE Reader Magazine as one of “50 Visionaries Changing Your World.”
She has been featured in over 150 newspapers, magazines, radio interviews, and television spotlights in top-tier outlets such as Newsweek, BusinessWeek Magazine, CNN, ABC News and Washington Post. Sumaya frequently speaks at professional conferences and educational institutions inspiring audiences on topics such as entrepreneurship, non-profit work, intrapreneurship, young professional issues, social media, diversity and technology.
The Entrepreneur
Sumaya is the CEO & Founder of Sumazi, where her team is building the technology that intelligently connects you to the people you don’t know but should, people that can potentially change your world. Sumazi was selected from over 1,000 international applicants to compete at the prestigious TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield where they won the Omidyar Network award for “Startup Most Likely to Change the World”. Previously, Sumaya founded The CulturalConnect, an online media publishing company dedicated to spotlighting young success across different ethnic diasporas. The CulturalConnect was grown from one weekly e-magazine to five weekly e-magazines and has published over 800 interviews of awe-inspiring young professionals in the for-profit and not-for-profit industries to a readership in over 100 countries. Each weekly magazine delivered accessible, must-read profiles of the professional world’s often overlooked population of driven, innovative, progressive and successful under-35 leaders to an expansive subscriber base of up-and-coming individuals of the same type.
For her passion and success around her entrepreneurial endeavors, Sumaya has been recognized by BusinessWeek Magazine as one of America’s ‘Best Young Entrepreneurs’, CNN as a ‘Young Person Who Rocks’, ColorLines Magazine as an ‘Innovator to Watch in 2008′ and has been recognized as a Who’s Who of Global Emerging Leaders among many other notable accolades. Sumaya was recently honored to join Nobel Peace Prize Winner Muhammad Yunus in a ‘Meeting of the Minds’, the youngest invited.
The Professional
Sumaya spent the last five years at Fortune 500 Sun Microsystems, a company that developed the technologies that power the global marketplace. Sumaya was recruited by Sun at age 22 and quickly moved up in her positions in the Executive Communications, Worldwide Operations and New & Social Media teams. As a Senior Social Media Manager in its Global Communications group Sumaya was charged with developing new and innovative programs to capture, expand and socialize new and evolving media, analyst and influencer communities. Recognized by her colleagues as well as by industry peers as a Social Media thought leader, Sumaya took her knowledge and expertise in the media world and integrated it within her work at Sun. Sumaya provided thought leadership and a young perspective on various issues for a major player in global business.
The Giver
Sumaya has a strong passion for progress and has been deeply committed to the nonprofit community for over 10 years. She has been actively volunteering in the areas of hunger, homelessness, blood donation, human rights, environment, and education.
Sumaya has served as an entrepreneur advisor for Businesses United in Investing, Lending and Development
(BUILD), a nonprofit social venture that empowers underprivileged and under-resourced high school students with an education in entrepreneurship.
Sumaya provides weekly support and guidance to a team of high school students in building their after-school business. Her team has won first place in the Business Plan Writing Competition hosted by Stanford University. Additionally, one of her mentees was recognized by the National Foundation of Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) as its ‘Young Entrepreneur of the Year’. Sun Microsystems has recognized Sumaya as one of its ‘Top 25 Stellar Volunteers’ worldwide.
Additionally, Sumaya is on the steering committee for the San Francisco Muslim Women’s Giving Circle, a social justice and philanthropic organization.
