Rym Baouendi passionate about using her expertise in sustainability, urban planning, and innovation to unlock sustainable and inclusive growth opportunities in emerging markets. She brings over two decades of international experience working with professional firms, startups, governments, academia, and not for profit organizations developing high-impact projects of unique entrepreneurial and innovative excellence.

Over the years she has worked to promote green buildings and sustainable cities globally, through policy advocacy, masterplanning, and design. She advised serval leading organizations including the US National Parks Services, the Abu Dhabi Urban Planning Council, the World Green Building Council, Nokia, Abu Dhabi Louvre, Masdar, and BMCE bank in Morocco.

Rym also played an active role in building the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Tunisia. She has also contributed to the wider innovation agenda in Africa, the Middle, and emerging markets. She co-founded Cogite, Tunisia’s first co-working space, which Forbes named as one of the “10 best co-working spaces on Earth”. She is a founding board member of Endeavor Tunisia and has spearheaded the development of BIAT Foundation’s entrepreneurship support programs in Tunisia. She also mentors startups at renowned incubators and accelerators such as the Harvard iLab, BWM Respond, and Katapult.

Rym currently serves as a Senior Advisor at the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at MIT and as a Climate Advisor with pan-African private equity and venture capital firms AfricInvest.

Rym holds a Masters in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School in Cambridge, MA, USA, a Masters degree in Building Engineering from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, a Civil Engineering and Urban Planning degree from INSA de Lyon in France, and a diploma in Initial Studies in Architecture from the School of Architecture of Lyon. She is also THNK fellow and a BMW Responsible Leader.