2018 40 Under 40: Ibrahim Odeh, 39

Founding Director, Global Leaders in Construction Management, Columbia University, N.Y.

BS civil engineering, Jordan University of Science and Technology
MBA, University of St. Thomas, Minn.
PhD civil and environmental engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 

Odeh is the founding director of Global Leaders in Construction Management (GLCM) at Columbia University. He is a unique combination of a strategist, academic, innovator, and entrepreneur. He established his own consulting practice in 2014 and in a short period of time demonstrated his value and contribution to multiple contractors, construction management companies, and engineering firms. His work seamlessly merges the worlds of industry and academia, spans the global construction market, and provides leading construction industry firms with unique market insights and growth strategies. His contribution includes both consulting and collaborating with firms such as Skanska, Turner Construction, AECOM, Vertex Engineering, HAKS, STV, AI Engineers, Dentons, Initiafy, and Indus.ai. Odeh is an advisory committee member at the World Economic Forum working on a project focused on studying the future of construction; he also is an advisory board member at Financial Times working on a similar initiative. A recent global project Odeh introduced in fall 2016 focused on providing massive open online courses (MOOCs) to educate global learners about construction management. Learners registering for his courses in 2017 reached more than 35,000 from 188 countries, with an average of 400 more learners every week. In 2017, his MOOC courses were ranked third on Coursera.org under the business category. Odeh is an extrovert who is passionate about meeting new people, learning their stories, and being a catalyst to their success. A large portion of his time is dedicated to getting to know people on a personal and professional level. He is a loving father and husband, and an avid traveler. He manages to combine work, family, and travel to have a healthy work-life balance. Every year, he visits a new country with his family.

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