Rami Salhab now works as a Data Scientist at IntPact, a Belgium-based company, where he handles machine learning and web-scraping projects. 

His path there started with ZAKA's AI Certification program, data science specialization "one of the most hands-on learning experiences I've ever had," covering everything from core statistics and ML/DL fundamentals to SQL, web scraping, and data storytelling.

What clicked most for Rami was the capstone project phase; he built an LLM-powered AI agent for a real company, not a hypothetical case study. It pushed him into prompt design, retrieval techniques, evaluation methods, and deployment fundamentals skills he now uses to confidently ship real features into production at IntPact.

That foundation shows up in his day-to-day work. Recently, tasked with designing a new scraping system at IntPact, Rami reused the exact production-ready workflow from his capstone, clean data validation, model-ready outputs and cut the delivery time significantly. "It impressed my team," he says. "It's a perfect example of how ZAKA helped me transition from learning to delivering real business value."

"ZAKA gave me not just skills, but the confidence to design and ship complete systems from start to finish," Rami says. He recommends the program to anyone who wants practical AI expertise backed by clear teaching and genuine support: "What truly sets them apart is their project-first approach, simple explanations, and a community dedicated to your success."

Most people think you need a technical background to build a career in AI. Marc Dagher used to think that too… until one experience changed his path. He has a bachelor in Psychology from the Lebanese University, Marc now works as an AI Engineer at Siren Analytics. "How could someone with a psychology background enter such a technical field?" he remembers wondering.

Everything shifted when he joined ZAKA's AI Certification program, machine learning specialization. His first hands-on AI experience came through real-world projects working with datasets, training models, writing algorithms from scratch. "It wasn't just theory, it was practical, challenging, and exciting work that helped me build a strong technical foundation," he says. Instructors didn't just teach, they mentored, and the community and ZAKA Careers team connected him to opportunities that led to multiple interviews after graduation.

The turning point was his capstone project: an agentic AI system, built with LLMs and knowledge graphs, that extracts users' personality traits and matches them to suitable careers. "It shaped the direction of my career," Marc says, his first deep dive into agentic AI, and the foundation for everything that followed.

After ZAKA, Marc interned with startups focused on AI agents before landing at Siren Analytics, where he now builds AI-driven features, works across NLP, Voice AI, and LLMs, and designs agentic AI systems. "Every skill I use today traces directly back to what I learned at ZAKA," he says.

His advice to anyone curious about AI: "If you want to build real projects and need support from mentors and a strong community, ZAKA is the place to start."

Curious to start your own AI journey with ZAKA? Please do get in touch at academy@zaka.ai 

Sonia Veronica Shoucair is a Computer and Communications Engineer specialized in Multimedia Engineering from Antonine University, with a background blending creativity and technology; UX/UI design, web development, digital experiences. But she always felt pulled toward something more: "intelligent systems, models that understand, learn, and solve real problems." That pull led her to the ZAKA AI Certification program, machine learning specialization.

Her capstone made the whole difference. She built an image-denoising model using a DnCNN architecture to clean up images affected by Gaussian and salt-and-pepper noise using residual learning, PyTorch, OpenCV preprocessing, and GPU training on Google Colab.
The capstone project became one of the strongest pieces in her portfolio, helped her stand out in interviews, and proved she could build a deep-learning model end-to-end.

Today, Sonia works across Microsoft Copilot Studio, Power Automate, and Azure AI, designing AI-powered agents, building intelligent automation, and integrating AI tools into business processes. "Every task I take on is built on the foundation I gained at ZAKA," she says.

"It didn't just teach me AI; it gave me the confidence to use AI in real-world scenarios," she says of the program's impact. She recommends it to students moving from theory to application and to professionals transitioning into AI or data science: "It doesn't feel like a course, it feels like a journey with a team supporting you."

Curious to start your own AI journey with ZAKA? Please do get in touch at academy@zaka.ai

Grace Rachid is Head of Environment on a major construction project, and she already works with AI in her day-to-day operations. But there's a difference between using AI and understanding it, a gap she noticed in herself. "While I am a technical specialist who uses AI, I have had limited in-depth knowledge and experience on AI functionality, development, use cases, and impacts before the program," she says. This wasn't a career problem. It was a depth problem. Her intent was clear from the start: "I was interested in the program for my own knowledge, accessibility, and familiarity with AI, and not necessarily as a career shift." Just curiosity, with intent.

Inside the program, that curiosity turned into clarity. "There were AHA moments in almost every module," she says. "As more information is shared, the picture becomes clearer and one relates more." That's what structured learning does that scattered exposure can't, it doesn't just add information, it connects what you already know.

What started as personal curiosity didn't stay personal. "The program has triggered more interest and passion for AI and AI consulting. I am now presenting a proposal to my employer," Grace says. That's the real signal: learning that stops being theoretical and becomes organizational impact.

Grace didn't switch fields, she upgraded how she understands the one she's already in. Her advice to future participants: "Participants should not undermine the time, effort, focus, and commitment needed to follow up and deliver." Her overall reflection: "It is a well-designed and delivered program, with an amazing instructor and team."

You don't need to change careers to change your trajectory. You need to go deeper than everyone else.

Curious to become a Certified AI Consultant? Please do get in touch at cac@zaka.ai

Sara Fouani is a third-year Data Science student. She knew how to write code and had experimented with AI tools but she also knew she wasn't ready for the real world of AI. "Before joining CAC, I was just a normal student who knew a few codes and AI tools," she says. That's not a technical gap. It's a judgment gap: "I had no background in AI nor consulting, the ability to know when to use and when not to use AI, and how a solution can be diverted from manual to technical ones." The real skill in AI isn't using tools, it's knowing when, why, and whether to use them at all. That's what consulting actually is.

Inside the program, Sara started seeing how decisions get made, not just how tools work. "I finally saw how consulting works. I didn't know that some cases were easier to start than others, that there are many different ways to find the information," she says, a shift from execution to problem framing, from tools to decision-making. She began applying what she learned directly in her academic work, including tools like Make.

One of her biggest surprises was learning how AI actually works under the hood. "LLMs, it was fun to learn how they generate and work," she says, the moment systems stop feeling like magic and start feeling like something you can control and design with.

Sara didn't come in as an expert. She left with tools she actively uses, judgment on when to apply AI, and the confidence to work in real consulting scenarios, a rare combination this early in a career. Her advice to other students: "Join even if you don't have the skills. You will develop them on the road, but make sure you know it takes time."

Most students try to learn more tools. High performers learn how to make decisions because tools change, but judgment compounds.

Curious to become a Certified AI Consultant? Please do get in touch at cac@zaka.ai

Karin Iskandarani's path into AI started with a simple question: "How does the internet work?" That curiosity grew into a computer science degree, and eventually into the ZAKA AI Certification program, what she calls one of the most important turning points in her career. Through hands-on projects, mentorship, and community, she learned to work with data preprocessing and ML models, apply machine learning to real-world problems, and, in her words, "bridge the gap between learning AI and confidently practicing it."

Her capstone project became the exact proof of that shift: "Smarter Homes, Smarter Agents," a modular multi-agent system built to overcome the limits of traditional rule-based smart home assistants. Karin's team designed specialized agents including an Intent Resolver and Context Manager and built a custom Model Context Protocol for safer, context-aware decision-making. The project deepened her understanding of LLMs and sparked a lasting interest in intelligent systems.

Today, Karin works as an AI Engineer at Phoenician Capital and also contributes to StartMeUp.ai, integrating LLMs into real systems, automating document intelligence, and building intelligent backend logic. When she recently designed an automation system to detect and organize company reports, she leaned directly on the NLP, data wrangling, and project-structuring skills from ZAKA work that made her "faster, more independent, and much more confident in tackling complex tasks."

As a ZAKA alumni, she recommends the program to anyone who wants more than theory: "It gives you the mindset, confidence, and practical experience to solve real-world problems with AI."

Curious to start your own AI journey with ZAKA? Please do get in touch at academy@zaka.ai

Ramzi Bou Khalil isn't early in his career. He has 18 years of experience in Technology & Telecommunications, advising major CSPs and hyperscalers on complex, high-stakes decisions.

His words on why he joined ZAKA's Certified AI Consultant program? "I have done consulting previously in the telecommunication domain and wanted to add AI knowledge to have more leverage," he says. Not to restart his career. Not to prove anything. To stay ahead of a market moving faster than traditional expertise can keep up with because experience without adaptation eventually becomes a limitation.

Ramzi joined the Certified AI Consultant program for structured execution, not inspiration. What he found was a highly structured, application-driven program built around real consulting work, with advanced modules on multi-agent systems and workflow design. What mattered more was execution quality: "Really a lot of dedication from ZAKA's CEO and the Certified AI Consultant Instructor Chris."

The real shift came through his capstone project, assigned outside his domain for an IT company facing an HR challenge. "This gave me an opportunity to see that AI consultancy can be applied to any field, not only to the technology and telecommunication field that I have been in for the last 18 years," he says. It's the inflection point: AI consulting isn't industry knowledge, it's transferable problem-solving. Eighteen years of experience doesn't narrow you, it expands your surface area.

His advice to other experienced professionals: "It is a good program if you are willing to put in the time and effort, specifically to learn how to approach companies and how you can help and consult them, whether it is AI related or not."

Most professionals try to stay relevant by adding more knowledge. High-level consultants do something different, they upgrade how they operate, not just what they know.

Curious to become a Certified AI Consultant? Please do get in touch at cac@zaka.ai

Ali Rammal is currently a PhD researcher at Sorbonne University, focusing on using AI to improve early detection of cardiovascular disease. His path into AI started while studying engineering at USJ (ESIB), through internships in software engineering and image processing, and later an applied AI internship with BMW Group in Munich "one of the most formative experiences in my early career," he says. As he gained more exposure to AI through research and industry, he realized he needed a stronger, more structured foundation, which led him to the ZAKA AI Certification program, machine learning specialization.

ZAKA gave him a solid foundation in machine learning, LLMs, and practical AI tools, along with hands-on exposure to MLOps, APIs, Hugging Face, and full ML pipelines. The mock interviews stood out in particular: "The mock interview at ZAKA played a direct role in helping me succeed in my PhD interviews with Sorbonne and IHU ICAN," he says.

For his capstone project, Ali's team built a multimodal system that extracts structure and text from mind map images, using synthetic data generation and computer vision "an end-to-end project that felt very much like real industry work, challenging but incredibly rewarding."

Today, his PhD research analyzes physiological signals from wearable devices to detect early markers of cardiovascular disease. "Everything I do, from data preprocessing, feature engineering, and modeling to evaluation and deployment traces back to the foundation I built at ZAKA," he says.

ZAKA, he says, "isn't just about learning AI, it prepares you for the real world," giving him the confidence to move from Lebanon to Paris and transition from student to researcher.

Curious to start your own AI journey with ZAKA? Please do get in touch at academy@zaka.ai

Zaher Amasha is an AI Engineer specializing in Generative AI, backend development, and cloud-based AI systems. He studied Mechatronics Engineering at Rafic Hariri University and spent a year and a half in undergraduate Data Science and ML research well before AI became the buzzword it is today. Even with that background, he needed something more: structure, mentorship, and a clear roadmap. That search led him to ZAKA's AI Certification program, machine learning specialization.

The 20-week program helped him organize scattered knowledge into real technical depth. "It wasn't just about watching videos," he says, "it was about theory explained clearly, hands-on projects, continuous mentorship, and a supportive technical community."

The real test came during his capstone project: building a parser to extract graph structures and text from messy, unstructured mind map images. With too little existing data to work with, Zaher's team built a synthetic dataset of over 6,000 labeled mind map images, then fine-tuned a Donut model after experimenting with multimodal LLM prompting and models like PaliGemma to reach reliable, real-world extraction performance.

Today, Zaher works full-time as an AI Engineer at InMobiles Holding, building Generative AI systems and backend services. His journey has come full circle: he now mentors learners at ZAKA, helping teams build their own capstone projects. "ZAKA gave me the roadmap, mentorship, and confidence to become a proper AI engineer, someone who can build, deploy, and optimize AI systems end-to-end," he says.

Myriam El Hajj spent 12+ years in corporate sales, CRM systems, SAP integration, and process improvement, she understood how businesses operate and where inefficiencies hide. The curiosity about AI was there; what was missing was a system to act on it. "I lacked the structured AI consulting framework, technical understanding, and confidence to turn ideas into real solutions," she says. That gap led her to ZAKA's Certified AI Consultant program, not to learn AI, but to connect business thinking with AI execution.

Through her capstone, Myriam built a structured approach to analyzing workflows, identifying AI use cases, evaluating feasibility, and designing AI transformation strategies. The modules that stuck most were opportunity identification, use case prioritization, and feasibility evaluation. They didn't make AI easier. They made it actionable in a business context.

The real shift, though, wasn't technical. "AI consulting is not only about technology, but about understanding business pain points and translating them into practical AI solutions," she says. "It shifted my mindset from 'learning AI tools' to 'solving business problems with AI.'" Once that clicks, you stop thinking in tools and start thinking about value creation.

Myriam recommends the program to professionals coming from business, operations, or sales. "It gives a strong balance between strategy, practical application, and real-world thinking," she says.

Most professionals try to enter AI by learning tools. The ones who build real leverage learn to translate business problems into AI solutions instead.

Curious to become a Certified AI Consultant? Please do get in touch at cac@zaka.ai