PhD candidate Frank Naboulsi, from the International Executive School, has published compelling new research on how persons with disabilities in Egypt navigate the barriers and supports they encounter as entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurship research has long been shaped by Western, able-bodied assumptions, leaving little room to understand how persons with disabilities in the Global South build economic lives on their own terms. Naboulsi and colleagues’ study steps into this gap, drawing on in-depth interviews with Egyptian entrepreneurs with disabilities to explore how they make meaning of their entrepreneurial journeys.

The research traces how participants transformed experiences of exclusion into entrepreneurial motivation, navigated compounded challenges, and built alternative support ecosystems through disability communities and family networks. In doing so, it challenges deficit-based narratives about disability and individualistic models of entrepreneurship, revealing instead the collectivist, kinship-rooted strategies these entrepreneurs have built for themselves within Egypt’s informal economy.

We congratulate Frank Naboulsi on this meaningful contribution to disability and entrepreneurship scholarship, and take pride in supporting research that gives voice to persons with disabilities building self-determined economic lives in Egypt.

Reference: Naboulsi, F., Kyriakou, Z., Ratnam, M., Moe, A.M., Tun, M.M., & Kyaw, H.M. (2026). From Exclusion to Enterprise: Lived Experiences of Disability Entrepreneurship in Egypt. International Journal of Indian Psychology, 14(3), 009-024.