Dr. Naif Al-Mutawa is the Founder and CEO of Teshkeel Media Group, for whom he created THE 99, the first group of comic superheroes born of an Islamic archetype. Teshkeel Media Group won the Media category of the 2014 Islamic Economy Award. Al-Mutawa received the award from His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates.
THE 99 has received positive attention from the world’s media. Forbes named THE 99 as one of the top 20 trends sweeping the globe and President Barack Obama praised Al-Mutawa and THE 99 as perhaps the most innovative of the thousands of new entrepreneurs viewed by his Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship.
Al-Mutawa has extensive clinical experience working with former prisoners of war in Kuwait and the Survivors of Political Torture unit of Bellevue Hospital in New York. He has seen first hand the cancer that intolerance can bring to any society. His direct contact with the horrors of people tortured because of their religious and political beliefs, led to his writing a timeless children’s tale that won a UNESCO prize for literature in the service of tolerance.
He received the Eliot-Pearson Award for Excellence in Children's Media from Tufts University, the United Nations Alliance of Civilisations “Marketplace of Ideas” Award, The Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneurship Award presented at the 2009 World Economic Forum and has been named as one of WEF's Young Global Leaders for 2011. In May 2012, he was chosen to be a Curator of the Kuwait chapter of the World Economic Forum Global Shapers Community. He is also a Member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Future of Media. As a part of the Council, he has been asked to identify breakthrough ideas and new pathways to help advance critical issues and ensure progress is made on the global agenda.
Al-Mutawa is also the Founder of The Soor Center for Psychological Counselling and Assessment, Kuwait’s leading professional source of a broad range of psychological services.
He has a PhD in Clinical Psychology from Long Island University where he also earned a Masters Degree in Clinical Psychology. He holds a Masters in Organisational Psychology from Teacher’s College, Columbia University and an MBA, also from Columbia University. He earned his undergraduate degree from Tufts University, where he triple majored in clinical psychology, English literature and history.
