Meet the women helping build the tech industry in the Middle East

Attitudes in the Middle East are changing - and women leading by example in the tech and games sectors are claiming an important role

If you left your country of birth in the midst of a war and found yourself in a promising career at Google, you'd be forgiven for staying put. But Lara Noujaim had other ideas. The business graduate travelled from Lebanon to California in 2006 and, after completing an MBA at Santa Clara University, she found work in America's thriving tech sector, joining Google as a Data Evaluator in 2010. Three years later, however, she gave it up to pursue a very different ambition: she wanted to help create a games industry back home.

"I could have stayed and built a career in the States, but I'm a very patriotic person, we all are in Lebanon," she says. "The games industry didn't exist, I came home to be part of creating it. I wanted to give something back."