Who is Issam Hijazi and what is his background in tech and product leadership?
Executive summary
Issam Hijazi is a Palestinian-Jordanian-Australian technologist and entrepreneur best known as the founder and CEO of the social network UpScrolled and head of Recursive Methods Pty Ltd, a Sydney-based company [1][2]. He has a multi-decade background in enterprise technology roles at firms such as IBM, Oracle and Hitachi and frames his product leadership around data, AI, privacy and opposition to what he describes as algorithmic censorship [3][4].
1. Personal background and identity
Hijazi is repeatedly described in reporting as Palestinian by heritage, born in Jordan and now an Australian citizen or resident, and has lived and worked across Jordan, the UAE, Singapore and Australia—details he and multiple outlets have presented to contextualize his public voice [5][1][6]. Sources also note personal motivations rooted in the Israel–Gaza conflict: Hijazi has publicly stated he lost relatives in Gaza and that those losses contributed to his decision to leave large tech employers and start his own platform [1][6].
2. Career in enterprise technology
Journalists and Hijazi’s own profiles trace more than a decade and a half of engineering and product work at established enterprise firms; multiple pieces list IBM, Oracle and Hitachi among his employers, and his personal site and conference bio describe 17+ years across data, AI and cloud [3][7][4]. He has held senior roles tied to data management and solutions, including a public association with Quantexa as Head of Data Management Solutions referenced in conference materials [8].
3. Education and technical credentials
Profiles attribute formal business and technical study to Hijazi: reporting cites an MBA from INSEAD (class of 2023) and a Graduate Certificate in Machine Learning & Computer Vision from the Australian National University , credentials that outlets use to explain his combined product and AI-focused leadership [9]. His personal and professional pages emphasize hands-on experience in data-driven platforms, cloud infrastructure and scalable architectures [9][7].
4. Founding UpScrolled and product positioning
Hijazi launched UpScrolled as an alternative social network that emphasizes uncensored content, non-monetization of user data, and different moderation algorithms; the platform quickly climbed app-store charts amid TikTok disruption and scrutiny of mainstream moderation decisions [4][5]. UpScrolled is headquartered in Australia with stated infrastructure choices—servers in Ireland—meant to support its privacy stance, and the company reported rapid growth and early capacity challenges as downloads surged [4][10].
5. Public rhetoric, political stance and controversies
Since UpScrolled’s rise, Hijazi has used public stages—most prominently Web Summit Qatar—to make forceful political claims, accusing “Big Tech” of enabling harm in Gaza and of censoring pro‑Palestinian content; outlets recorded his denunciations of influential investors and of perceived political capture of platforms, though critics note his speeches often mix emotional testimony with broad assertions that lack specific public evidence [6][11]. Some coverage highlights how that rhetoric has driven attention to UpScrolled—selling out events and boosting downloads—while also attracting scrutiny for mixing product promotion with geopolitical allegations [3][6].
6. Assessment of his product leadership and challenges ahead
Reporting paints Hijazi as a founder who blends enterprise technical credibility, recent business education and a politically charged mission to reshape social media governance; his leadership is credited with rapidly building a team and product that scaled to millions of users in a short window, but also with confronting operational growing pains and heightened expectations about content moderation and platform safety [10][4]. Independent coverage indicates the company’s positioning fills a market demand for perceived alternatives to Big Tech, yet it also raises questions about sustainable moderation policies, the veracity and sourcing of political claims tied to the platform, and how an ideologically framed product can balance open speech with misinformation and safety risks—areas not fully addressed in available reporting [1][6].