Meet the Judges

Anas Almarie is an Executive and Founding Member of Arab Social & Digital Media Council, Co-Host of the weekly show #HRMEChat in affiliation with (SHRM) Society for Human Resources Management – MEA, Award Winning Entrepreneur by Dubai Internet City 2015, Founder of MENA Social Media Awards, TV guest speaker, Keynote speaker and a featured speaker at various conferences and trade shows across Middle East and Africa, Former Lecturer at University of Sharjah – Engineering School, active member at Social Media Club, Chair Judge at International Business Excellence Awards, Gulf Customers Experience Awards, he’s currently the Director of Training & Consultancy at Focus Social Academy in Dubai Media City. www.AnasAlmarie.com

Ian Golding is a Certified Customer Experience Professional. A highly influential freelance CX consultant, Ian advises leading companies on CX strategy, measurement, improvement and employee advocacy techniques and solutions. Ian has worked across multiple industries including retail, financial services, logistics, telecoms and pharmaceuticals and has deployed CX tools and methodologies all over the world. An internationally renowned speaker and blogger on the subject of CX, Ian was the first to become a CCXP Authorised Resource & Training Provider.

Bala is a Certified Customer Experience Specialist who leads Marketing, CRM and CX Practices as Business Director at Jacobsons. He is a Customer Strategist with over 20 years’ experience in helping brands to focus on monetising customer intelligence for business growth in the region. Bala is an accredited practitioner of SCHEMA® Customer centricity framework, and a Fellow of IDM, UK committed to the highest levels of professional and personal excellence. He Judges at the Gulf CX Awards and is excited to see the positive trend in adoption of Customer centric practices by brands in the region.

Customer focus and experience measurement characterize Akram’s 36 years career. His experience spans Consumer Research, Advertising & Marketing Services, Direct & Loyalty Marketing, CRM, Customer Experience Management & connected practices. While member of the Executive Board of the IAA-UAE Chapter Akram co-organized or chaired several Awards editions from 1993 till 2003, with particular emphasis on jury appointment, entry screening & assessment methodologies and criteria. Akram currently advises other entities that award via jury selection or public voting

Customer experience strategist and business transformation advisor; Advisory Board member and international keynote speaker. Supporting executive teams of Fortune 500 companies and SME’s to design and drive significant customer experience programmes with impact.

Craig has worked on customer centered change in the financial services, telecoms, luxury retail, technology, education, hospitality, healthcare and travel sectors.

Craig is Customer Experience Director at Activate Experience and more recently held the position of Customer Experience and Brand at Emirates. He is based in Dubai and consults internationally.

Helen develops strategy that drives focus and direction for client organisations to deliver superior customer and employee experiences and dramatically improve business results.

Using design thinking and service design tools and techniques she inspires cross functional creativity to innovate current and future customer experiences. Her non-traditional approach to consultancy is focused on building internal capability through knowledge transfer training programmes and workshops to foster a truly customer centric culture.

Her 20+ year career has delivered excellence across a range of industry sectors including publishing, education, government services, real estate, retail, telecommunications and leisure. Helen founded the customer experience consultancy Customer at Heart in 2010 and now works as an independent customer experience consultant.

German national and 13-year Permanent Resident of Singapore, Marcus has more than 25 years in the Sales and Service Management Industry.

Marcus conducts Customer Experience-based Mystery Shopper programs, Customer Satisfaction Survey programs and Focus Group discussions to inspire & improve Client service delivery across all touchpoints to help people & organizations to make their Customers’ lives better.

In training sessions Marcus gets people inspired, motivated & skilled to improve their performance, while sharing real-world experience gained working with organizations around the globe.

Since 2017 he is Associate Faculty Member of the Othman Yeop Abdullah Graduate School of Business in Malaysia.

Daniel Ord is an American national and 30-year veteran of the Contact Centre & CX industries.

Daniel is an ICMI Certified Associate, a CIAC Strategic Leader and a Certified Customer Experience Professional as well as an Associate Faculty at a Graduate School in Malaysia and an Associate Trainer at the Singapore Civil Service College.

Daniel founded his company, OmniTouch, in 2001 and conducts global workshops and training on CX, Contact Centres, Leadership, Management and communication skills. Daniel’s company also conducts CX-based Mystery Shopper research.

Kashif is a corporate and government service consultant with years of progressive experience leveraging management consulting skills with legal acumen to drive business growth, protect assets and Intellectual Property, assure legal compliance and minimize risk. He is currently working as Director Government Services with Biznet Consulting, advising Property Developers on Government approvals for their projects.

His is also an active Council Member of GLG (Gerson Lehrman Group) and successfully incorporated many local and MNC’s in UAE. His expertise and knowledge includes; structuring of legal entities and help foreign companies to setup branches and investment companies in UAE.

Ismail Al Hammadi is an expert real estate professional. He is founder and Managing Director of Al Ruwad Real Estate and Biznet Consulting. Before starting his journey as an entrepreneur, he served as Executive director (Business Development) in TECOM, Sales Director in TECOM investments, Manager Government Relations in Dubai Industrial City and Senior Coordinator in Department of Economic Development Dubai.

His versatile experience enables him to provide appropriate consultancy to real estate investors and streamlined solutions for startups. The entrepreneur and resourcefulness in Mr. Hammadi helps organization to create profitable changes through unconventional and futuristic thinking using nimble and advance technology cutting down unwanted time constraints and road blocks. His venture and synergy till date have complimented hundreds of campaigns, non-profits, legal boards and brands.

Syed currently leads Performance Marketing for IBM's Collaboration and Talent Solutions business unit across Middle East and Africa. His experience is centered around developing and delivering compelling digital customer experiences across the region, with an emphasis on web and social media strategy, and performance optimization driven by client centricity.

Syed is passionate about design methodology, education and volunteering.

Ayman is the Co-Founder and Group Managing Director of The Corporate Group. He is in charge of subsidiaries responsible for delivering one-stop-shop of professional services related to business setup solutions and enabling both FDIs and foreign companies to do business in UAE and the region.

He has attracted businesses across all sizes and industries such as but not limited to education, healthcare, technology, energy, professional services. Some of these businesses are listed in global stock market while others are start-ups offering disruptive technologies/ideas.

Furthermore, his experience includes advising companies for corporate structuring and merge & acquisition transactions along, developing operational framework that delivers unique customer engagement with clients and stakeholders along with association with both private and government sectors.

Past work experience:

• Worked in Government Resource Planning project (currently known as Dubai Smart Government) for Oracle implementation across local government departments of Dubai Government (2002-2006)
• Co-Founder and COO of Zeroday IT Solution L.L.C., an information and cyber security consulting company based in Dubai (since 2007)
• Corporate Business Services L.L.C., a professional services company specialized in company formation solutions and business consultancy based in Dubai (since 2007)

Personal achievements:

• Awarded for outstanding performance and achievements made in GRP project (currently known as Dubai Smart Government)
• Working closely with Injaz UAE as judge/mentor for entrepreneurship programs. Injaz UAE is a member of Junior Achievement Worldwide (JAW), one of the world's largest non-profit business education organizations
• Participating as judge for various award programs of International Awards UAE
• Active speaker in number of local and global seminars and conferences sharing knowledge and experience around entrepreneurship and legal/operational framework of doing business in UAE
• Active member of Institute of Directors, Hawkama at DIFC

Ayman is fluent in English and Arabic. He earned his BA in Business Administration and Information Systems at University of Colorado (USA) and pursing for his Master of Project Management in British University in Dubai.

Marc Karschies is considered one of the leading experts on Customer Experience (CX), Customer Service (CS), Service Quality (SQ), and LEAN Management in the MENA region. Marc’s international cross-industry advisory includes Corporate and Service Strategy, Customer Experience Management, PMO Setup, and integrated KPI & Measurement Systems.On top of his international consultancy work, he is a frequent conference and corporate event speaker, award judge, university teacher, and expert trainer.Marc holds a wide range of professional certifications including CXPA “Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP)”, ASQ “Certified Quality Manager (CMQ/OE)” and “Six Sigma Black Belt (CSSBB)”, and is McKinsey LEAN, PMI and Prince2 Project Management certified.

Prior to becoming Executive Director for SHRM MEA Dubai, Brad Boyson spent 15 years holding senior HR roles in globally diverse organizations including Mitsubishi Corporation (Tokyo), Royal Caribbean International (Miami) and most recently, Hamptons/Emaar (Dubai). A globalist by nature, Mr. Boyson has practiced embedded HR on every inhabited continent and has first-hand HR experience in almost every major industrial sector. He holds three business degrees, six active professional HR certifications, is a published author (Global HR Economics), frequent international keynote speaker and board member on UAE government & UAE university HR advisory committees.

Francisco is co-founding partner of Innoway. Before that he spent more than six years in a strategy consulting firm, specialized in Strategy Execution.

Francisco has wide experience as a strategy & innovation consultant, helping organizations define their strategies, innovate and also help startups validate their ideas and grow their business.

Jorge is the Executive Director of Innoway, an innovation house focused on helping organizations instill innovation practices. A dedicated professional with more than 17 years of international experience. Some of Jorge’s relevant roles: Innovation catalyzer at ADNEC, Transformation coach at Philip Morris, innovation advisor at Mars Wrigley and startups mentor and coach. Jorge collaborates pro bono with Grow Movement, a Non-for-Profit organization that helps entrepreneurs in East Africa.

David is a senior operational & strategic executive with over 20 years' service experience. Having managed large scale operations throughout EMEA/NA/LATAM/APAC markets, with a team in excess of 1000FTE across 15 languages and 50+ nationalities, David learned quickly that when running successful customer centric operations, customer experience & employee experience are interlinked. David is a passionate individual who truly understands what is needed to drive customer experience improvements on a truly global playing field.

James started Touchpoints Consulting & Communications in 2008. Since then he has been helping clients in the GCC, North African, Central European and Asia Pacific markets realise their Customer Management aspirations. James brings a decidedly customer-centric viewpoint to customer management and helps clients realise the potential of communications to create and manage moments of truth. He has also run innovation workshops for some of the regions larger brands and governments. His recent and current clients include twofour54, Yas Marina Circuit, Nissan, Environment Agency-Abu Dhabi, United Nations Environment Programme, Aldar, Majid Al Futtaim and the Berkeley Group. James is a regular speaker at client and industry events. Prior to establishing Touchpoints James worked for the Ogilvy Group for 17 years, across Asia Pacific, Europe and most recently as the Chief Executive Officer of OgilvyOne Middle East, which he founded. He was the architect of Emirates frequent flyer programme – “Skywards” and several of the regions other leading loyalty initiatives in the financial services, telco and hospitality sectors.

Rima, graduate of Harvard Business School, is a commercially driven business leader with more than 17 years’ experience in multinational blue-chip companies across Europe, Caribbean and last 10 years in Middle East.

Having worked for organizations with different levels of financial prowess and cross-cultural operations, Rima can easily lead and integrate high performing teams.

As Senior Leadership Team Member of ManpowerGroup Middle East, Rima helps set and drive its strategic executive framework. In addition, as Regional CFO, she drives the business and its financial strategies; as Regional Director of Shared Services she drives HR, Legal, Marketing & IT strategies; and as Regional Leader of Right Management, she drives ManpowerGroup's Career and Talent Management brand.

Mohammed Husary is a results-driven leader, entrepreneur, and corporate strategist with over 20 years’ experience in aviation. He is Co-Owner/Founder and Executive President of UAS International Trip Support, a leading global trip support solutions provider. His dynamic leadership has helped the organization create innovative new products and services and has been a pivotal factor in its strong global expansion.

Mr. Husary sponsors a wide range of philanthropic social initiatives. He’s also a member of several official international associations and organizations. In 2018, he was selected as a member and lecturer in the Arab Professionals Forum of Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Knowledge Foundation and won the Sapphire Pegasus award for lifetime achievement.

LYNN BAKER Director CX Connection and Customer Experience Academy South Africa. She has worked for corporates in UK & South Africa focusing on Sales, Marketing and Customer Experience. Lynn attained her Disney Institute Quality Service Certificate in 2006 and attended the Disney Customer Experience Summit, California 2018. Lynn is a renowned international speaker on Customer Experience and combines her dynamic keynote speeches with interactive learning by playing the Customer Experience Game with audiences around the world.

Emad is a Business Excellence professional with twenty years experience, influencing and guiding repatual organizations both in governmental and private sectors to improve business performance towards achieving excellence culture and practices that have been rewarded with recognizable business excellence awards.

Emad had shown a great success in helping businesses to improve business processes, build excellence culture, enhance their capacity, generate innovative ideas, explore the future, reduce waste and increase profit

Elaine’s 15+ years experience span Financial Services, Telecoms, Luxury FMCG and Consulting; across disciplines from Customer Experience and Strategy to Marketing Insight & Planning. During that time she has led customer experience transformation programs, brand migration, and several multinational strategic planning cycles. She co-created a proprietary strategy programme and ran multiple senior cross-functional teams.

Elaine helps clients clearly shape and plan for success, grow loyalty and advocacy, and raise their creative potential with a laser-sharp customer experience focus.

David Oghogho is an Experienced Customer Service Professional with proven track records of building customer experience programs through systems implementation. He is very passionate in helping organisation maximize customer satisfaction and drive customer loyalty.

A dedicated and passionate professional with more than 8 years in the service support industry.

He holds an MBA degree from the prestigious university of Lagos, and has several certifications and trainings both in customer service and sales related courses.

During these 14 years in the UAE, acquiring the knowledge and experience through various fields, such as hospitality industry (hotels), promotion and marketing roles, real estate market and finally reaching to an interesting field of Human Resources.

Taking pride in helping people achieving their professional heights through corporate growth and personal development.

Loving any communication with more superior professionals to learn from the best.

Aslan Patov is a choice architect & advocate of behavioural science. He is helping brands bring clarity into processes, environments and decisions. As an expert in behavioral economics and customer experience, Aslan has been delivering solutions from intelligence to strategy and measurement for multiple clients in and outside of the region including BAT, Pfizer, Emirates, Suntory, Emaar, Chalhoub Group and many others across multiple industries including retail, financial services, pharmaceuticals, malls, entertainment, logistics and FMCG.

In his recent consulting role, he has supported Emaar's Transformation Program to develop and deploy CX initiatives across a range of disciplines including Data, Customer Interaction, Retail Spaces, Digital and Online Touchpoints.

Lucy is focused on the innovation space, both in terms of supporting founders and as an investor. She is a Director of WAIN (Women’s Angel Investor Network) and sits on the Advisory Board of Mindshift Capital. She is also an investor with NextWave Ventures and the Founder Institute, both based out of the US. During her 12 years in Dubai, Lucy has garnered a strong reputation for originating business focused events that target captains of industry, as well as trendsetters in the UAE through her firm, The Elements Group.

With over 16 years’ experience in professional services marketing, business development and client service for three of the largest global accountancy & advisory firms, Mandip has worked across diverse markets in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, where she has developed, driven and lead market specific growth strategies, client experience programmes and organizational repositioning. A qualified Chartered Marketer, Founding member of the GCC Chapter of the Marketing Society and a seasoned delegate of the Harvard Business School, she has been awarded accolades from strategic partners in recognition of marketing excellence.

With a career spanning 18 years, Lijo has worked across India, Middle East, and Africa in Nokia, Microsoft, and Pepsico, he is now on his entrepreneurial journey. With a passion for technology and marketing, Lijo works towards finding the best CX by bringing those two passions together. He believes that the step towards a perfect CX is by first defining the why. He has helped make payment gateway solutions, SMS aggregators while running his Marketing Communication agency, Prodigi Connect.

12 years of strong experience in brand and product execution for digital integrated businesses. Rizwan is passionate about digital media and expert in brand development at 360 degrees. His extensive knowledge about design user experience strategy to help large organizations supporting business development by reviewing, defining overall digital needs, which dominant him within the industry. Rizwan loves to face challenges across the business difficulties and take sharp decisions to develop customer first attitude to make business flow through the stumbling blocks.

His wide exposure into brand awareness services, brand loyalty programs and consultancy for business-driven results on many levels throughout various industries such as Lifestyle, Real-estate, Traveling & Tourism, Retail, Automotive, Sports, Technologies and Media Monitoring, Etc make him unexampled.

Bhanu Prakash Reddy is a Certified Digital Marketing Strategist with 7+ Years’ experience in Seo, Sem, Smm, Web Development, Ad words, Analytics, IT Support, Video Editing, Target Marketing, Inbound, Outbound Marketing, CRM and Vlogging. He is Curently CEO/Digital Marketing Strategist for OPTC Digital Solutions Group (OPT-C Network India). He lastly Worked with Most Business firms such as Marine Consulting, Real Estate, Fashion, IT Companies, Travel, Consultants etc.

Web: - http://optcdigi.com
LinkedIn: - https://www.linkedin.com/in/digitalmarketingdubai/
Follow me on Social Profiles @Yourscbpr

Bernice brings over a decade of experience in delivering memorable consumer experiences in the Middle East.

She has had the opportunity to contribute across multiple industries including FMCG, Real Estate, Hospitality, Retail and Automotive, primarily focused on acquisition, retention and advocacy.

Her role at Philip Morris Management Services is focused on CRM strategy and execution as a catalyst for digital transformation.

She will be judging at the CX Awards and is excited to see the growth in organizations adopting consumer centric practices in the region.

A strategist and digital transformer with over 13 years of mixed technical and business experience building enterprise systems and customer facing touch points, Mohammed Ali is currently the Director of Digital Business at Emirates Post.

Mohammed holds a master’s degree in Logistics and Supply Chain in addition to being PMP Certified. In his spare time, Mohammad is a startup and entrepreneurial consultant.

A Customer oriented, data driven & creative mindset who can transform business needs into innovative services and memorable customer experiences. with over 12 Years of extensive national & international experience in Integrated & Multi-channels marketing campaigns & projects, Digital Transformation and Customer Experience

Seham is currently the General Manager of Digital & CRM at Renault Group in Middle East, primarily focused on digitizing the customer journey, stretching business, and implementing the best practices in loyalty & Rewards Programs to deliver a personalized and easy customer experience.

Farhan is a Partner with KPMG Lower Gulf and leads the Digital Transformation practice. He is a thought leader in Digital Transformation and has written multiple industry perspectives and has been a keynote speaker at a number of events.

He has particular skills in helping clients understand the implications of digital forces such as Mobile, Data, Social, Internet of Things, Cognitive Computing, Robotic Process Automation and Cloud to determine the opportunities and threats they represent and undertake the required Experiential Design Led Transformation to deliver value. He brings a wealth of experience and has delivered numerous projects in UAE, Saudi, South Africa, Turkey, Australia, New Zealand, UK, US, Sweden and India, working with Senior Executives from Financial Services, Telecommunications, Retail, Hospitality, Aviation, Mining and the Public Sector.

Prior to joining KPMG, Farhan has held leadership positions with IBM Global Business Services where he led their Digital Consulting Practice for the Middle East, Turkey and Africa for the Banking Industry and the Business and Customer Strategy Consulting Practice for Australia and New Zealand. He holds a Masters in Business Administration from Australian Graduate School of Management, Australia and a Bachelors in Commerce from University of Pune, India.

Emma is Senior Customer Director within Oracle’s Cloud Transformation Team, advising and supporting customers through their own CX design, transformation and journey to cloud. With an infectious passion for people and customers and a former CX director and industry recognised Customer Experience lead, Emma was named as one of the UK’s top 100 influencers. She brings a wealth of strategic and hands-on experience in both design, operational leadership, design and implementation of award winning solutions, customer centric best practice, technical solutions, adoption and employee engagement

Ciarán is currently the Managing Director of FCM Travel Solutions, parent comany of Flight Centre Travel Group, in the UAE and brings over 16 years experience from the global travel industry with his experience gained from Europe, Middle East and African regions. Ciarán brings experience, passion and dedication to his position as Managing Director for the UAE business and the 23 other countries he oversees in the region and collaborates daily with colleagues around the world of 100 countries where FCM has a presence.

Over the last 6 years Ciarán has been responsible for FCM's growth and expansion into key markets across the region and is focused on delivering a highly-professional yet tailored approach to business travel management for the Middle East and Africa. He has expanded the company into 15 new markets during his time the UAE. Ciaran understands what is needed to drive customer experience improvements on a truly global playing stage.

He is a thought leader in Corporate Travel, extremely active on social media platforms providing insight into the region and industry. He has particular skills in helping clients understand the implications and efficiencies of Mobile, Data, Supplier Negotiations, Automation and Client retention to determine the opportunities and threats they represent. He brings a wealth of experience working with Senior Executives from Media, Retail, Hospitality and the Energy sector to name a few.
Prior to joining FCM Travel Solutions, Ciaran has held positions with British Telecom and global consulting company, Hay Group in Europe. He holds a Masters in International Business from University of Lyon, a Bachelors in European Business Studies with Langauges from Guildhall University, London and has travelled to over 80 countries during his career to date.

web: www.fcm.travel

Having close to 20 years of professional experience in the travel industry within the U. A. E.. and now leading the customer experience and growth strategies within FCM Travel Solutions, Tony has previously worked with leading European Airlines – SWISS, British Airways and Global Travel Management companies – American Express and HRG Dnata.

Tony has a keen interest and drive in developing customer loyalty through a valued travel service delivery and improve on efficiencies by applying innovative and state-of-the-art technology.

Tony has Completed a Master of Business Administration from Andrews University, U. S. A. and Commercial Leadership Program from University of Witwatersrand, South Africa.

Web: www.ae.fcm.travel

With more than 15 years of professional information technology experience, operations management, and deep understanding of business systems. Yasser expertise varies between Business Process Design, Enterprise Content Management, Enterprise Resource Planning, Business Intelligence, Networking, Virtualization, Security, and Data Analysis and Reporting.

10+ Business and Technology certificates and a proven record of accomplishments demonstrating strong leadership coupled with hands-on expertise, strong analytical and problem solving skills and the ability to follow through projects from inspection to completion.

Edwin Best is CRM & Customer Experience expert. He is owner of The Best CRM, guiding organisations for the transformation towards Customer-Centric business.

Edwin has (internationally) collaborated with a lot of customers with a wide range of CRM & Customer Experience issues; CRM / Cx strategy, CRM selection, CRM implementation and change management.

He is acting on the cutting edge of business and ICT. His mission is to make an active contribution to discipline of customer centric business.

Ismail is heading the Digital Ad solutions in the MENA region for Deezer, a pioneer in global music streaming services. He is a well-known media veteran in the MENA region with over 25 years of professional experience in the media and marketing communication industry. His extensive experience in working with top multinational communication groups has made him an industry reference.

Ismail’s deep knowledge of the region’s media landscape has allowed him to craft some of the most successful media communication campaigns for Forbes 500 top brands such as Toyota, PEPSI and McDonald’s, among others. He is a graduate from The Sorbonne University in Paris University and holds a BA in Economics and MA in Econometrics.

Over 30+ years of experience in telecommunication, media in various positions for improving Quality, Processes and Customer Experience.

As Founder and CEO of Zenith, Russell Hammad leads a number of business interests, with an underwritten determination on entrepreneurial innovation. Transcending continents with an Australian business acumen, Hammad has established a distinguished presence in the GCC/ME marketplace over the last decade in the homeland security space, with an innate doctrine of excellence in software and hardware niche disruptor platform developments, in the Law Enforcement and Security apparatus space.

Although Hammad’s competence and skill set span diversified industries, included Hospitality, Entertainment, Healthcare and Property development, the current and most prominent emphasis is in the technology industry. The area of specialization is in the design, development and enablement of solutions that fuse the ever-fading divide of the physical and virtual disparate security data. A notable expertise is in harnessing and correlating OSINT and Broadcast Monitoring feeds in real-time, which is a pronounced technological focus and prowess.

Hammad spearheads the Zenith Group with an Australian, UK and GCC presence, encapsulating a number of industry disrupter technologies - bridging the physical and digital security footprint and OSINT languages' divide.

A holder of several patents and Intellectual Property registrations in the world- first and distinguished Zenith Intelligent Lightbar and the comprehensive Media Monitoring System (MMS) platform. Hammad’s vision and strategic reach has cemented him as a thought leader in deciphering the challenges faced by law enforcement and State Security apparatus.

With stern leadership and strategic credence, Hammad leads a team of highly competent subject experts in a regional and global capacity - empowered by a number of leading disrupter technologies.

Academically, Hammad holds a BSc. in Applied Science Computing, a major in Linguistics and Culture - Monash and Melbourne Universities in Melbourne Australia and an Executive MBA (Class of 2015) from London Business School.

Alpay Akdemir is a Partner of Peppers & Rogers Group (PRG), recognized as the world’s leading authority on customer-centric business strategy. He joined PRG in 2005 as an Analyst and has worked in the company’s offices across Middle East, Africa and United States respectively. In his 14 years of consulting experience, he has had the privilege of working with leading organizations around the globe and region (such as Facebook, T-Mobile, Microsoft, USAA, Bank of America, Procter & Gamble, STC, Alrajhi Bank, MediaMarkt, Telkom SA, CellC).

Dee Burrowes is a woman of authenticity and greatness on a mission to support others to accomplish their own greatness. She empower and motivate others to live life on their terms by stop settling to discovering a life of happiness and abundance. With more than 15 years of corporate managerial roles, Dee is a Certified Life Coach, NLP Practitioner, Speaker, Teacher and Author that help clients globally to walk in purpose. Her belief and dedication allowed her massive success.

Alessandro Gaffuri is a retail strategy specialist passioned about how to create Preferred Meeting Places across the GCC and Europe. With clients from Europe and through-out the GCC Alessandro is the regional industry leader in shopping centre activation, creating unique marketing niches and mainstream digital content.

Working with shopping malls and leisure venues since 1997, his role is helping brands understand the needs of customers and interact more closely with them. Following global market trends, retail strategy today involves the study of each touch point with visitors, thanks to multidisciplinary methods and a full range of tools – from loyalty systems to live events, from in-mall media to festive lighting. Alessandro creates places were social bounds are just as relevant as shopping related interests.

www.cels.group

Mr. Sulaye has more than 14+ years experience in the MENA region managing key market research and consulting assignments across FMCG, Automotive, Retail, Banking, Oil & Gas and Public Sector Government Services; he handled key clients’ accounts in the region such as: The Prime Minister’s Office-UAE, BMW, Coca-Cola, Smart Dubai, Emirates Post Group, Al Ain Municipality, The Executive Council of Dubai Government. He and his co-workers applied the psychological motivational research approach known as the WHY5Reseasrch model to define and measure happiness and positivity among customers and employees at the workplace.

Prabu Balasubramanyan serves as the Executive Director for TransSys solutions. In this role he provides strategic leadership and governs the expansion of services and business solutions of TransSys in providing an End – to –End scalable IT services. He develops the Operational plan which incorporates goals and objectives that work towards the strategic direction of the organization, contributing to TransSys’ mission of Client Business Transformation by accelerating innovation.

Prabu comes with over 18 years of experience and was last serving as Vice President & Head of Delivery for Middle East & Africa for Mahindra Satyam (erstwhile Satyam Computer Services Ltd). With over 12 years of association with the delivery management of varied projects in diverse domains (Airlines, Telecom and Banking & Financial Services as a special mention) and a significant portion of this having been spent in the Europe, Middle East & Africa, Prabu brings in the unique perspective of delivering ERP solutions to meet the expectations of the customers of this region in a way that would help the stakeholders realize value and their vision of such implementations.

Simona is the Customer Experience Business Development Manager at Oracle, responsible for CX Digital Transformation and business growth across GULF countries.

Having experience across various functions within the Banking and Technology industry, she has been in the customer experience world for nearly 15 years.

Within her current role, Simona focuses on Digital Transformation in key nominated accounts and leading brands with help of Oracle ecosystem, believing that not being customer-centric is the biggest threat to any business.

Prior joining Oracle in 2016. Simona worked as Senior Manager heading Multinational Corporates Department within largest Bank in CEE.

She has won a series of internal and external awards for her work.

Annette leads Thomas Cook’s cultural transformation into a customer-focused business implementing new ways of working that put the customer at the heart of Thomas Cook’s delivery. In this framework she is also responsible for the overall customer experience strategy and roadmap with a clear focus on improving and designing the end2end customer journey. Annette has extensive knowledge in Customer KPIs and oversees the Customer KPI framework of the Group. She is responsible for setting and achieving the NPS targets across the various business areas of Thomas Cook.

In addition she leads the Guest Experience and Product Definition team within TC’s own hotel business area that is responsible for implementing aligned processes and innovations across Thomas Cook’s eight hotel brands with 200 hotels.

Vishal currently manages the business development activities and is a liaison between Product Management and Sales. He works with sales teams to arrive on a go-to-market approach and solution strategy.

He is a seasoned Customer Experience solutions Professional with close to 2 decades spent in the customer experience domain across multiple industries in account management, sales consulting and delivery in client facing roles across continents.

He is conversant with various solutions and capabilities in this domain and has been instrumental in key accounts in the regions across his tenure.

Nikhil is a result-oriented & customer focused professional with more than 11 years of experience in CRM, Sales & Marketing and Customer Service Operations. He has had the opportunity to contribute across multiple areas on CRM while his stint with Toyota, India and has been a part of the journey of CRM in Toyota since its inception.

Now his endeavor at BMW Group; Oman is focused on design and implementation of CRM strategy and lead the Digital Transformation. He is also responsible for the overall customer experience strategy, playing a pivotal role as the Brand Customer Advocate

With nine years of experience in the Marketing Discipline. As a Digital Marketing Manager

Fouad Khafaga consulted, developed and build 50+ brands, in Government, Semi-Government and Private sectors. Carefully monitoring and adapting to the evolving customer behaviour through the digital revolution, Fouad creates an approach that is unique to the authenticity of the brand and responsive to the demands of the market.

As an Author and International Keynote speaker Fouad values the importance of storytelling, Marketing Integration and Martech stacks as pillars to his marketing strategies.

Personal Blog: https://bit.ly/2BlvDNm
Twitter: @Fouad_Khafaga

Andrew is CEO and Co-Founder of the world's first UGC Agency and has worked with over 100 brands in the Middle East & Asia, including Atlantis The Palm, One&Only, Emaar, Six Senses, Rove Hotels, RAK TDA, DCT Abu Dhabi, Coach, Bloomingdales, Harvey Nichols, MAF Retail and Al Tayer Retail, executing successful UGC strategies. Andrew was also responsible for launching a MEA first in-guest room UGC experience for Atlantis The Palm, a powerful tool for building their brand, engaging customers, and inspiring action.

Mr. Mohammed is a highly experienced executive with strong leadership and organizational management abilities. Carrying notable strong business convening experience spanning more than 16 years in; Marketing, Digital Transformation, Project Management, Customer Experience, Customer Care. He has worked across industries (Telecom, Finance, Healthcare, Education & Hospitality) covering a wide spectrum of scenarios for incumbents, new entrants/startups, demonstrates a strong capacity to understand business needs, objectives, identify challenges/opportunities, set plans boosting the competitive edge to increases revenues and enhances customers' experience.

Mohsen has over 20 years of experience covering emerging markets, across strategy, planning, and execution roles. He has worked on the client side as head of strategy for a digital media company, as well as on the management consulting and industry research side. Mohsen’s industry expertise spans telecom, media, digital, financial services, public policy, and technology. He is an expert in corporate strategy, corporate performance management and the XPP and Balanced Scorecard Norton-Kaplan methodology, digital transformation, and customer experience, with multiple consulting projects completed and white papers authored on these themes. He is a certified Balanced scorecard practitioner, and a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP).

Joachim Yebouet is having about 30 years of extensive experience with the private and public sector organizations, all from multinationals like Unilever & Tiger Brands, family conglomerates and exposure with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, at senior executive positions and empowered with in-depth operational management expertise across Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

Sherif Ibrahim has spent 12 years of his customer service experience at the largest companies within the Gulf area, like Aramex, Emirates NBD and SIVVI.COM " Al Abbar Enterprises ". He has managed to reach the highest customer satisfaction ratings and Delivery percentage in E-Commerce/Retail field within UAE and Gulf area and looking forward to achieving more.

15 years of experience across 4 countries in Digital, Customer Experience Innovation, as well as, Revenue Optimization, Strategy, and Performance Management across a wide number of companies/industries. Focused on improving business performance by putting customers at the centre of businesses.

MBA from IE Business School. Mechanical Engineer with a Masters in Motor Sports. MIT Sloan Certification in Digital Business / Artificial Intelligence.

Dr.Jyotsna Nair works as Executive Director in the world’s largest Market Research firm. With over 25 years’ experience in strategy and policy research, business development and client engagement, Dr.Jyotsna has worked across diverse domain in India and Middle East such as Health, Education, Travel& Tourism, Aviation, Customer & Stakeholder Experience, Skill development, and Environment. As a business leader she is closely involved in strategic guidance, capacity building, mentoring and team management.