Bola Ibrahim is an international higher education strategist, policy adviser, and education researcher with more than 20 years of experience across higher education, EdTech, transnational education, international development, digital transformation, and global partnerships in the Middle East and North Africa.

Ibrahim has since held leadership and advisory roles with organisations including McGraw-Hill Education, the British Council, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), Coventry University Group, Bournemouth University, and The American University in Cairo, and has led multimillion-dollar, large-scale development projects supported by the European Commission and various international donors.

A veteran entrepreneur since 2005, he began his entrepreneurial journey by founding and leading an Egypt-based IT and digital services startup focused on digital solutions and technology services during the early stages of the region's digital ecosystem growth. This experience established a long-standing interest in the intersection of technology, innovation, and education. In 2017, he founded Impact Mark, a UK-based advisory and research firm focused on education and international development, through which he has led consulting and research projects across the UK, the MENA region, and Africa. During COVID-19, he has worked with McGraw-Hill Education on various regional initiatives across the Middle East and Africa, focused on digital learning solutions, institutional partnerships, professional education, and technology-enabled teaching and learning.

Through his consulting and policy work, Bola has led multimillion-dollar programmes and international funding initiatives, supporting projects focused on digital transformation, quality assurance, research governance, institutional strategy, education reform, online and blended learning, employability, and cross-border higher education across Egypt, Morocco, the GCC, and the UK.

He holds an MA in international and comparative education from the American University in Cairo and is currently pursuing a PhD at the UCL Institute of Education, where his research examines transnational education policy and the evolving role of higher education in the Middle East. Ibrahim is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and holds memberships in various prestigious UK institutions, including the Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE), the British Educational Research Association (BERA), and the European Association for International Education. He is also an international affiliate at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in the United States.