Virtual Career Networking Event

Lama Gebara
HR Director, MENA & South Asia
GE Gas Power

As HR Leader of the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia for GE Gas Power, Lama Nakkash is responsible for designing and executing the regional HR strategy, managing complex organizational changes in dynamic environments, building organizational culture and developing top talent.

Lama has over 20 years of HR experience, including 10 years in HR consulting, and has worked extensively on organizational design, restructuring, and integration activities following mergers and acquisitions. She joined GE in 2006 as HR Manager for GE Industrial, covering the Middle East and Africa (MEA). She has held progressively senior roles at GE since then, most recently serving as the HR Leader for GE Power in MENA, before moving into her current role in 2019.

Lama holds a Masters degree in Public Administration from the American University of Beirut. She is fluent in Arabic, English and French and is based in Dubai, UAE with her family.

James Tucker
Talent Acquisition Leader - Africa, Middle East & India
Nissan Motor Corp.

James Tucker currently heads up Talent Acquisition & Onboarding for the Africa, Middle East and India region of Nissan Motor Corporation. James has worked in the field of Talent Acquisition since 2002 where he initially began his career as an external search consultant in London, UK before transitioning in-house in 2007 where he has worked for major organizations such as IBM, Honeywell and now Nissan. James has been based in the UAE for the last six years and held senior Talent Acquisition roles leading global recruitment teams. In his spare time James tries to keep fit by running and ran the Dubai Marathon in 2017 and 2020.

Ramy Bayyour
Regional Director – Middle East
CIPD

Ramy is the Regional Director for CIPD in the Middle East. Based in Dubai, he is responsible for leading the local team to deliver on CIPD’s mission to champion better work and working lives in the region. A member of CIPD’s Extended Leadership Team, Ramy also leads on CIPD’s commercial and growth operations in the Middle East. With over 15 years of experience in the HR, education and professional development space, he brings a fresh perspective into the world of people and work. He is a regular speaker on the future of work, people management and is passionate about advocating for employee voice, flexible work, and diversity and inclusion in the region. Ramy joined the CIPD in 2017 and under his
leadership, CIPD’s growth in the region across many fronts reached record numbers. Ramy holds an MBA from Manchester Business School.

Rashid Al Hosani
Commercial Director – Maqta Gateway
Abu Dhabi Ports

Rashid Al Hosani is the Commercial Director at Maqta Gateway, a wholly owned subsidiary of Abu Dhabi Ports and a central pillar of the company’s strategy to be at the vanguard of integrated, digital, global trade. As Commercial Director, he is responsible for developing and driving commercial strategies that will induce sustainable growth and enable Maqta Gateway to take its place among the top trade facilitation companies around the world.

Mr. Al Hosani is an experienced and focused leader, who brings to Maqta Gateway a we alth of Commercial knowledge and experience, with a particular focus on information and communication technology. Over the past decade, he served in a number of senior roles within the MENA region, which positions him well to help Maqta Gateway deliver on its core vision and corporate goals.

Specifically, as a Regional Director for Middle East and Central Asia at the Thuraya Telecommunications Company, he developed regional sales strategies for service partners and key stakeholders across diverse markets and geographies. Furthermore, he also served as a Commercial Manager at the Al Yah Satellite Communications Company (Yahsat) for over five years, where he headed a team of country managers and oversaw business development activities in more than 20 nations in the African region.

Mr. Al Hosani began his career at Dubai World where, among other roles, he served as an Assistant Manager of Business Development. While at the company, he was responsible for designing and negotiating commercial proposals with government partners and agencies, which included maritime ports and free zones – an experience which gave him first-hand exposure to the maritime sector.

Tim Shelton
Digital Transformation & Innovation Lead
Arcadis Middle East

Industry and academically acclaimed strategist, digital enabler and change leader, transforming and driving business excellence and innovation through industry, global enterprise and major capital programs. 18 years of experience gained through working in both client-side and consultant roles in the UK and Middle East.

Well versed in best-practice major project and programme delivery, Tim is a seasoned Construction & Real Estate (“CRE”) executive who has demonstrable experience in developing the strategy, tools, assurance, governance and protocol in order to ensure value-added and successful outcomes for major real estate and infrastructure clients. In a UK and Middle East based career spanning over 17 years, Tim’s career has transitioned from traditional, consultant-based roles in commercial management to strategic, client-side roles focused on business efficiency and enhanced performance through digitally-enabled major asset delivery.

As an advocate of asset delivery best practice and industry thought leader, Tim is a firm believer in adopting collaborative and digital delivery approaches as a means of extracting greater value across the integrated supply chain and to ensure that delivery stakeholders are objectively aligned and sufficiently driven by performance and data. This has led to an informed view of how the CRE sector is transitioning and an understanding of how industry stakeholders need to respond by tailoring and diversifying their services accordingly which has been recognised through his appointment as Digital Transformation Lead for the Middle East, for Global Design and Consultancy firm, Arcadis.

In his transformation role, it is Tim’s job to ensure his organization has a clear strategic roadmap that manages this transformation; first and foremost in their employees, but also in the processes and the technology they use. His role also includes the formation of collaborative industry partnerships that are created in order to bring the transformation to life through changing the “what” and “how” the business delivers to market in new innovative ways.

Tim thrives on being able to inspire people and to get them to think bravely, and assist them in nurturing new ideas that will ultimately change the face of the CRE industry for years to come. One example of this is how Tim has launched of an innovation platform in Arcadis to encourage the introduction of new ideas from across his organisation. The platform is open to all, with the best ideas for business improvement and new products rewarded through idea coaching, development and exposure to the global business.

As an industry change champion and thought leader, Tim also has a passion for bridging the gap between private industry and education in order to nurture the required emerging skillsets necessary to support the required change in the CRE industry. Tim has spoken at numerous public events with regard to the importance of a collaborative partnership between educational institutions and private industry.