Chaim Zaher

EY World Entrepreneur Of The Year™ Class of 2023, Brazil
Founder and CEO of Grupo SEB

Share the joy of Chaim Zaher’s winning moment at Entrepreneur Of The Year™ Brazil.

Chaim Zaher believes in the transformative power of education to advance opportunities for students worldwide.

Chaim Zaher believes that education can change the world. As Founder and Chairman of Grupo SEB, he is well on his way to doing just that after building the largest educational conglomerate in Brazil.  

Chaim was born in the village of Habbarie, Lebanon, in the early 1950s. From a very young age, he was a hard worker, selling gum on the streets of his homeland to support his family. When Chaim was 7, he and his family fled the civil war and emigrated to Brazil, settling in Araçatuba, São Paulo. 

At age 20, he worked at a preparatory school, where he served as a ceremonial and commercial representative. Due to his dedication, he was invited to set up a school in the city. This was the start of Grupo SEB. 

Today, Grupo SEB serves over 350,000 basic education students through a network of more than 300 schools across Brazil. It also has more than 550 bilingual educational institutions in 30 countries under its Maple Bear brand, the largest network of its kind in the world.  

Believing in the transformative power of education, Chaim has always given back. Through SEB Institute, 300 underprivileged youth are provided training to prepare for the job market each year, and over 3,000 inmates in the São Paulo prison — who intend to enter the university — access the SEB education platform. His NAU Project has also helped 700 young people join the job market. Chaim is the main shareholder of the Yduqs Institute, which maintains more than 60 social projects, impacting more than 700,000 people.