The B8 of Hope Executive Board

We have refined our initial board, originally comprised of eight co-founders, by establishing a more compact Executive Board. This specialized team concentrates on steering the governance of B8 of Hope, ensuring alignment with our vision and mission, and overseeing the association’s management.

Mehra Rimer  was born in Iran. She emigrated to Switzerland in 1979 as a consequence of the Iranian revolution. Raised and educated in a Catholic boarding school in Lausanne, she is a graduate of The School of Interpreters and Translators at the University of Geneva and The Institute Of Oriental Languages and Civilizations in Paris. Mehra worked as a language teacher, free-lance translator and a training program coordinator for different schools, organizations and companies. She has been running B8 of Hope on a full time and pro-bono basis since its creation in 2016.

Leila Hawa Leila Hawa was born in Switzerland to a Palestinian/Lebanese father and an Italian/Swiss mother. Raised and educated in Switzerland, she studied law at the Universities of Geneva and Basel. After her Geneva bar exam, Leila pursued a master’s degree in law at the University of Columbia in New York. She is currently working as a lawyer specialized in M&A transactions and corporate and commercial law matters in Geneva. Besides being active on the executive board of B8 of Hope, Leila volunteers in the organization of the B8 of Hope galas and hosts of other events

David Rimer was born in Canada, grew up in Switzerland and studied at the International School of Geneva. He is a graduate of Stanford University, with a major in Anthropology. After founding and leading Index Ventures – a European venture capital firm – for 20 years, David moved on to new endeavors and obtained a degree in pedagogy from the University of Durham. He then became a high school history teacher for 5 years. Since 2020, he is focusing on a new activity in the impact media space and founded The Story Board Collective. Throughout these career changes, he has been active at B8 of Hope since the start of the association.

Arun Chandrasekharan grew up in both the United States of America – where he was born and went to Middle and High School – and Switzerland – where he went to Primary School and High School. After studying at the University of Geneva, Arun became an attorney-at-law in Geneva in 1998 where he continues to practice in his own law firm. He sat and sits on numerous Boards including in the past on the Board of the Geneva Bar Association. He is the son of an Indian father and Swiss mother and today is the proud father of three school-aged children.