Nicolas Maurice Sehnaoui (born 23 April 1967) was the Minister of Telecommunications of the Republic of Lebanon, from june 2011 to february 2014. Since taking office, and in just 2 years, Sehnaoui has successfully transformed Lebanon’s telecommunications infrastructure from bottom-ranked economy-stifling to leading-edge globally-competitive. Under his leadership, the Ministry of Telecommunications (1) upgraded antiquated copper backbone to fiber optics and DWDM latest technologies with plans ready for FTTC and FTTB, (2) replaced ancient EDGE cellular networks with 3G across the country and 50 Mbit/s 4G LTE in greater Beirut, (3) and increased Lebanon’s international bandwidth tenfold via IMEWE whilst securing redundancy through participation in the Alexandros submarine cable; all while reducing internet & mobile costs by up to 80%. By June 2013, with the infrastructure well on its way to recovery, Sehnaoui turned his attention to Lebanon’s knowledge economy, more specifically its digital economy: he created Beirut Angels – Lebanon’s 1st tech startup angel network – and actively supported the creation of Banque du Liban Circular 331 – a groundbreaking 400 million USD equity investment guarantee initiative that transformed Lebanon’s banks into VC-oriented institutions. Sehnaoui is now leading Lebanon’s Digital Roadmap Steering Committee to ensure it’s successful implementation. All these efforts where measured & confirmed by the United Nations International Telecommunication Union that ranked Lebanon 1st in progress out of 157 countries in the 2012 ICT Development Index Report. Prior to taking office, Sehnaoui successfully managed several companies across a variety of industries. Sehnaoui is a strong advocate of a secular political system.