A journalist and early online innovator in Egypt in the late 1990s, Tarek Atia founded web portals cairolive.com and zahma.com, was Assistant Editor in Chief of Al-Ahram Weekly, and has had his writing published in prominent international media outlets including The Washington Post and Neue Zurcher Zeitung.

Since 2006, he has worked in media development, designing and implementing capacity building programs for over 5,000 journalists, editors and mangers working across print, broadcast and online platforms. He has also been an adjunct lecturer at Cairo University’s Faculty of Mass Communications, the American University in Cairo and the Intajour International Media Academy in Hamburg, Germany.

In 2011 he founded and now heads the new media training consultancy EMDP (Egypt Media Development Program), which offers professional development and management consulting services to the Egyptian and regional media sector. EMDP is also the publisher of Mantiqti (My Neighborhood), Egypt’s first hyper local print newspaper covering downtown Cairo.