The federal NDP leadership race has a new contender: a political outsider from Montreal.

Ibrahim Bruno El-Khoury is an name unknown to even die-hard politicos. His rivals for the leadership are four sitting MPs who are well known in NDP circles.

“I’m somehow perceived as a different kind of candidate because I am not coming from the same context as the other candidates, who are all MPs,” El-Khoury told iPolitics.

El-Khoury was born in Beirut, Lebanon but moved to Kingston, Ontario in 1991. He is the founder of a small international consulting firm, Wise & Expert. And this isn’t his first leap into politics.

He was a candidate for Mélanie Joly’s municipal Vrai changement pour Montréal party in 2013 and sought the federal NDP nomination in the Montreal riding of Papineau in 2015.

Joly is now the federal minister of Canadian Heritage; Prime Minister Justin Trudeau won the Papineau riding for the Liberal party.

During his 2013 municipal run, El-Khoury did not have a federal party affiliation. He considered joining the Liberals, but said the NDP was better aligned with his personal beliefs. He became a member of the NDP in 2014.

Even though he’s a new face in the NDP, El-Khoury said he believes he has an asset that will set him apart from the other candidates: an understanding of what makes a good leader.

“Leadership is a science and an art. That is an advantage for me and a disadvantage for the other candidates,” he said.

El-Khoury has spent most of his career in leadership positions. Starting in the mid-1980s, at age 24, he worked as a regional manager for American tech company Unisys in Saudi Arabia and then in the United Arab Emirates.

He studied organizational leadership at HEC Montréal and founded his consulting firm in 2004.

El-Khoury was part of a mass evacuation of Canadians from Lebanon during the 2006 war, and struggled with his return to Canada.

“It was a tragic moment of my life. I came back with a lot of suffering,” he said.

“It wasn’t easy for me to find the right kind of working life according to my qualifications and my experience. I wanted to really be a part of the community and play a role in the city.”

The evacuation served as a catalyst for El-Khoury’s political ambitions. He had never planned to enter politics, but after returning to Montreal from Beirut, he said, he wanted to get involved to “make a better city, a better life, better living conditions for me and for others.”

El-Khoury said he sees a lot of room for improvement in Canada, from economic practices to social issues.

“We cannot continue this way,” he said. “Our democracy needs an upgrade.”

His main priorities are improving social factors, from ending the gender pay gap to reducing poverty rates across the country.

In order to achieve these lofty goals, El-Khoury proposes a change in the political process. He wants to take a run at the Liberals’s abandoned promise of electoral reform, but also takes the idea a step further: “We have to agree to shift the relation between money and power.”

Before he can get to work on trying to change Canada’s system of government, El-Khoury has another major hurdle to overcome: The NDP needs to recognize him as an official candidate.

Robert Fox, the party’s national director, gave El-Khoury a declaration of approval, but to be recognized as an official candidate he needs to raise $30,000 and collect signatures from 500 party members in “good standing.”

The requirements for these signatures are strict ­­— at least half must be from party members who identify as female, at least 50 signatures must come from each of the five designated regions across the country and at least a hundred signatures must be gathered from “equity-seeking groups” such as visible minorities and indigenous peoples.

El-Khoury said he does not see these criteria as barriers. His campaign team is finishing up his website to collect signatures and he has already gathered financial support from “people who are showing their support and readiness to contribute.”

“I’m confident that these are not major constraints,” he said.

He plans to complete both requirements within the next six weeks, so he can participate in the leadership debate in Sudbury on May 28.