Karim Samra, founder and managing director of Changelabs: 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 Changelabs founder and Managing Director Karim Samra (LinkedIn). Edited excerpts from our conversation:

My name is Karim Samra. I was born in Cairo, and I’m a Belgian citizen. I’ve lived in seven countries, I speak five languages, and I love learning about cultures. I have a BA in History from Boston College and an MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business, where I was a merit-based scholarship recipient. I spent my childhood and adolescence as an immigrant in Europe and the US with my parents Amina Sabry and Hisham Samra, to whom I remain incredibly grateful.

I spent 15 years working in large multinationals like Barclays Capital, GE Capital, and Booz & Company. After this, and following my beloved mother’s battle with cancer, I shifted over to the social entrepreneurship sector as the COO of the Hult Prize Foundation in partnership with the Clinton Global Initiative to seek a better work-life balance.

I partnered with a number of MENA governments to design and build national student entrepreneurship programs as part of that role. I met my wife at one of those, and knew I would marry her almost instantly.

I'm a co-founder of the Hala Sultan Trust, Cyprus' first registered organization for Muslim welfare, as well as the founder and managing director of Changelabs, which builds entrepreneurship, innovation, and corporate training programs in the Middle East and Africa.

At Changelabs, I’m responsible for basically making sure that my team and myself have the skills, tools, resources, and headspace to deliver the best entrepreneurship, innovation, and corporate training programs.

That’s very broad, but so is my role. Everyday is totally different. Sometimes I have to find, interview, and hire new colleagues. Other times I have to make sure our events are set up properly, help with a storyline for one of our impact reports, have a chat with a prospective client, or design a bootcamp curriculum. I also MC at summits, occasionally fix invoices and coordinate with an auditor, spend a lot of time coaching founders, and more. It's only possible with the help of my amazing team, who give me wings, so to speak.

I had a long and unfulfilling career in corporate America, combined with a deep commitment to humanity and values in MENA. So I left Wall Street, looking to align my purpose and my values with my work. After that, I spent six years with the Hult Prize Foundation, and that taught me about entrepreneurship as a force for change and opened my eyes to the potential of the Middle East and Africa.

I wanted to be that change, to enable and ignite it in a region that I believe holds so much potential but has often failed to reach it. It sounds simple and orderly, but it was a highly unpredictable and challenging journey. I couldn't have planned it even if I tried, and I could only see one step ahead at a time — and sometimes not even this.

What I see in the Middle East and Africa is essentially a big gap between what we can achieve and where we are, especially when it comes to entrepreneurship and innovation. This applies to founders, startups, funds, corporations, and the government. Changelabs tries to solve problems for all these actors.

In my view, the most interesting trend right now is the increased alignment that we're seeing between investment and values. When you look at the research, some are saying that consumers are willing to pay up to 30% more, maybe even more, for products and services that they perceive to have a positive impact, to be ethically sourced, to be clean, organic, etc.

On the government side, the same shift is happening. European governments, for example, are now mandating green targets for emissions, but also for food and agriculture. Needless to say, this is causing disruption to supply chains. Egypt is a significant agrifood supplier and one of the largest fish suppliers to the world. So when Europe says these things need to be grown or treated a certain way, that affects Egypt as a supplier.

All these factors are changing the consumer, regulatory, and corporate landscape — and ultimately the investor landscape. People are now thinking about what their money is being used for. You’re seeing large pension funds divesting from fossil fuels, weapons, and alcohol. They want to align their money with their values — and this has long-term ripple effects.

I wake up at around 5am. I'm usually woken up by the neighborhood rooster where I live in Cyprus and make my dawn prayers. I then go back to sleep, and wake up around 8am and try to hit my three Ss before work — sun, sea, and salawat — and I try to squeeze in a run or a game of squash when I can. My wife is Lebanese, and they have this term for a morning coffee chat called sobheya, so I do a sobheya with my wife almost every day.

I then go and check EnterpriseAM before I get ready to respond to emails and take my first call of the day. I usually never schedule calls before 10am for that reason, to give myself that space in the morning to do those things. I don't have a commute since I work from home most days, so that gives me a little bit more flexibility in the morning.

One of the things that really regulates and organizes my day is my prayers. I try to do the five every day. They have certain times, so that adds a rhythm and structure to my day.

What helps me focus is taking regular and varied breaks. If you just stay for eight hours a day at your desk, and maybe take a 30-minute lunch break, also at your desk — which is something I used to do a long time ago in New York and elsewhere — you would think that makes you focus better, but it doesn't.

Work-life balance is non-negotiable for me, but it comes at a cost. I’ve had to make choices throughout my career where I did give up on salary increases, promotions, and more to ensure that I prioritized a work-life balance. Even now, I have to continue to make sacrifices and active choices to ensure that I maintain that balance. I'm very committed to my work, we all are, and if I let myself go unchecked, I’d work 24/7.

I always try to end my day barefoot on the beach. To me, that has a very calming effect on the soul. I live very close to the sea, so I usually end my day that way with my wife or by myself.

I've gotten a lot of great advice, and I've been very lucky for that. More recently, one of my spiritual guides and mentors gave me the following advice: when we are tested, that means we're on the right track. And I felt like that really resonated with me and my life.