Fred Mouawad, Founder, Chairman and CEO – Synergia One Group of Companies
Fred Mouawad is a global citizen, portfolio entrepreneur, and founder of Synergia One Group of Companies. Synergia One is the entity that groups all the companies he founded including the family jewelry business, Mouawad, of which he is the fourth generation and Taskworld – a project management SaaS application.
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Overview
“When I start a new company, I’m involved in multiple roles and step by step I pull myself up by bringing people in, up to the point I become the chairman” – Fred Mouawad. Ashutosh Garg engages in a conversation with Fred Mouawad, the founder of ‘Synergia One Group of Companies’. Fred is a Lebanese businessman from Lebanon based in Bangkok. He has founded and is the CEO of seven companies. In 2013, Wealth-X named Mouawad the eighth richest diamond owner in the world, with a net worth of $1.1 billion. Fred talks about his early life and the inception of his career. He explains how the entrepreneurial spark in him gradually led him to his overwhelming success. Fred, who is also a graduate gemologist, remarks on how India contributes to the gem industry. Fred shares his views on how the millennials are changing the world of business. Being a veteran who has ventured into multiple businesses at the same time, Fred talks about how he managed to do that successfully. Fred proceeds to analyze the merits of having a co-founder. Before concluding, he points out the common mistakes that the startup entrepreneurs make.
Profile
Fred Mouawad is a global citizen, portfolio entrepreneur, and founder of Synergia One Group of Companies. Synergia One is the entity that groups all the companies he founded including the family jewelry business, Mouawad, of which he is the fourth generation and Taskworld – a project management SaaS application.
The group operates in 15 countries across several industries that encompass gems and jewelry retailing, diamond manufacturing, watchmaking, food manufacturing, software as a service, and publishing. He also from 1997 to 2017 founded and led Global Franchise Architects – a food service company with five brands that expanded to 240 stores throughout 7 countries. With his experience in private equity, in incubating and growing several ventures internationally, and of co-managing with his brothers the century old family business, Fred has developed comprehensive management systems that seek synergies across his portfolio to maximize value creation.
Fred grew up in Geneva, Switzerland where he attended boarding school at College du Leman. He received his Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Pepperdine University, where he was also a teacher’s assistant for the Business Policy & Strategy course. He is a Graduate Gemologist from the Gemological Institute of America, an alumnus of the Harvard Business School (MBA 1995) and of the Stanford Executive Program (SEP 2012) at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Fred is a YPO member, Co-Founder of the YPO ASEAN United and SEA Angels Chapters, Co-Chair of the YPO Stanford GSB Program (2014-2020), Co-Chair of the YPO INSEAD Global Family Enterprise Program (2019) and served as YPO Southeast Asia Regional Chair FY 2017-19. Fred is also part of the Family Business Network in Asia, and in 2018 he joined the Harvard Business School Global Advisory Board.
