Mohamed Elnawawy, engineer and lawyer: Each week, My Morning Routine looks at how a successful member of the community starts their day — and then throws in a couple of random business questions just for fun. Speaking to us this week is Mohamed Elnawawy (LinkedIn), engineer and lawyer.

My name is Mohamed Elnawawy. I’m a lawyer and engineer, centered around the intersection of tech-based innovation and supporting companies that want to break barriers in the gig economy and fintech sector as well as customer companies. I also reside on numerous boards, a role that sees me support governance and healthy board functions.

I have a history of being in the right place at the right time: I co-founded Egypt’s first internet service provider (ISP) InTouch back in 1992, which gave me the chance to work with new technology that was nascent and important. It was a time when the internet was just green text on the screen and the most important application was email.

We sold the company eight years later and for nearly a decade I oversaw the glorious submarine cable business of Telecom Egypt connecting Asia and Africa to Europe. I eventually became CEO of Telecom Egypt, where I had the privilege to work with 50k people across nearly 2k localities in Egypt, as we underwent the important task of modernizing network access by advancing optical communications and pursuing total telecom ambitions.

Now, in my day-to-day I support telecom-based litigation, public policy work: I have my own firm in Garden City that supports tech-related litigation, so I sometimes write reports or get cross examined by parties or tribunals. I also work on public policy issues pertaining to tech or business model needs.

My wife calls me a professional student: I graduated from law school in 2016 when I was 50 years old. I decided to pursue law as I wanted to help customers and to understand the regulation for telecoms and fintech — the next thing I knew I was graduating from law school.

Disruptive investing: I’m also an investor and I seek disruptors that fall into my four pillars — modern medicine, such as genomics and human DNA; the new business model, from regulation, to social media and blockchain; clean energy production and storage; and autonomous everything, what many people might refer to as robotics like self-driving cars or AI assistants like Siri and Alexa. Of course, in common with each of these pillars is the compounded disruption of AI and customer data serving as the fundamental source of perpetual value.

People are the source of wealth: The population of the African continent is expected to triple within the next 75 years, while other continents will see flat growth, meaning this is an area where there will be a lot of young people creating space for investment. The question will be whether the investors that take these chances from inside the continent or outside.

Law follows disruption: In our part of the world, we follow civil codified jurisdictions, meaning bill writing is very important. When disruptions appear that are important and reflect big societal issues, the law needs to change and adapt. This isn’t unique to Egypt, very few countries in the world have the law come in and the business and society follow.

Institutionalized investing could be my next step, as I’m beginning to think about moving away from being an ad hoc investor. I want to build a glorious team that I can learn from and develop with and find an energetic co-founder to do this with. It would mean being able to invest more than just my little money and make a bigger impact.

My day starts relatively early and I often read EnterpriseAM in the morning or during my commute into work. I embrace the idea of staring at screens. I don’t think it’s a problem, it just depends on what you are doing when you stare at a screen. If you’re being idle, that’s a problem, if you’re being somewhat productive and happy, that’s cool.

The office is about meeting people and nowadays even the layout of the office has changed to accommodate that, with more meeting rooms and common working areas. I love talking to my team and learning from them. I can also look out onto Cairo and try to find some of the hidden, but beautiful architecture.

I’m always walking around with a university-style notebook writing things down. I encourage my team to do the same to stay focused.

My daughter is one constant in my day as well as starting the morning with a cup of coffee. Work never ends these days, it comes home with us and is inside our phones. I’ve learnt that you can bring life with you to work, but family comes first.

When the work day is over I like to row and I also play with my daughter — having a child is a great workout.

Two pieces of advice from my parents have stayed with me: My father taught me to live with dignity and my mother taught me to be kind in the way that I live and act.

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