Hello, I am Ahmed Shoukry or A. I. Shoukry. I am a urologist, academic, and author. I love to read, write, learn, and share it all with the world. Here is my story.
This page is not a résumé or a manifesto.
It is a chronological account of how different phases of my life shaped the questions I now write about: meaning, responsibility, choice, and what it means to live attentively in uncertain times.
Early Days
When I was in high school, I survived a car crash, and while lying in bed in a hospital, I wanted to understand what was happening inside my body. I decided that I wanted to apply for medical school, and now I am a professor of Urology at Cairo University.
In 1999, I launched an online portal for sharing hobbies, sports, interests, and real-life meetups, abkaria.com, later abqaria.com.
I started blogging in 2004, and in 2006, I felt the need for an Arabic blogging portal. So, I founded an online platform for independent bloggers, dedicated to citizen journalism, i-bloggers.com, and later on ibloggers.org. The platform offered free blogs for its members and curated news and blog posts from news agencies side by side.
I also founded several online portals for several niche communities; the most successful was Mdlinked.com. I still believe that online communities are more successful when they are based on shared interests. All these projects are currently shut down.
30’s
After my grandfather passed away in 2008, I felt a great responsibility to help in shaping Egypt’s political future, so I became politically active.
I ran for the Egyptian Parliament twice. Once before the 25th of January uprising in 2010 in Shirbin, Daqahlia district, and again in 2012 in Dikernes, Daqahlia district, placing second place with 102,000 votes. I also co-founded the El-Adl Party (Justice Party) in 2011, and five years later, I served as vice president of the MisrAlQawia Party. In late 2016, I resigned from all political positions. I stopped political activism since then.
40’s
I found myself in despair, so I started running. A few months later, I ran two half marathons. Since then I am a casual runner, I even published a running memoir.
I noticed the lack of Arabic-speaking podcasts; I took the initiative and learned how to write, host, produce, and publish a podcast. In September 2017, I launched the Istqlal Podcast to raise awareness of the importance of this medium of communication and to spread knowledge. I reflected on this period in my blog post, “Finding my Voice“.
In late 2017 I wanted to try another medium of communication, self-publishing. Although self-publishing has been around for a while, the awareness of it and its use is still lagging in the Arab world. I published three books through 2018, each reaching higher bestseller ranks in its category and later topping bestseller lists.
My first book is In or Out: A Practical Guide to Decision Making, followed by my running memoir, It’s Not Just About Running: Reflections on Life and Change in Egypt. My latest book is Anchor System Thinking: The Art of Situational Analysis, Problem Solving, and Strategic Planning for Yourself, Your Organization, and Society.
In 2018 and 2019, I self-published my three books in Audio format, exploring a new avenue for audiobook production. Owning full copyrights by producing and using the crowdsourcing platform Findawayvoices. I reflected after publishing three books in my blog post, “Why I published three books in English“.
2020
In our turbulent times, amid the uncertainty we live in today, we all seek advice for growth. I have noticed that most online courses on decision-making are more targeted toward business professionals. They all lack the transformation needed to make great decisions, especially in life. So in March 2020, I founded The Decisions Academy. An online learning platform for decision-making in life and work.
2025
I consolidated my writing into two newsletters: The Life and Work, a monthly newsletter on purpose, meaning, and what makes us human in the 21st century.
The XY Digest is a monthly newsletter on men’s health.
Current
I am currently a busy surgeon and a Professor of Urology at Cairo University.
Looking back, these phases may seem disconnected — medicine, politics, running, publishing — but they converge on the same question: how does a person live responsibly, without losing their inner life?
This question continues to shape my writing, my work, and the essays published here and in The Life & Work.