Dr. Ghadah Alarifi is the founding dean of KAPSARC school of public policy, heading a team tasked to create an institution that provides accredited graduate degrees and executive education in public policy - addressing current needs in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia related to energy and sustainability policy analysis and development. Prior to joining the KAPSARC in January 2022, Ghadah served as the Dean of the College of Business Administration and lectured on business at Princess Nourah University (PNU) in Riyadh.

In 2018 she was given then the task of establishing PNU’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center. Her worked on the istablishment and development of the center contenued after her apointment as the dean of the college of Business Adminstration Over the past decade, Ghada has contributed immensely to human capital development initiatives through the launch and implementation of national and local programs focused on financial literacy, entrepreneurship, and social development. She has been involved in many research, policy development, and advocacy activities.

Dr. Alarifi earned her PhD in Management focusing of social entrepreneurship at Royal Holloway, University of London, and was awarded an MBA in finance from Prince Sultan University and a BS in accounting from King Saud University. She also has been credentialed in courses on Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School and at the INSEAD Executive Education program. Her academic interests include entrepreneurship, social policy, sustainability and social innovation. She is an associate professor with various publications and more that 1100 citations.

Halim Choueiry (Ph.D.) is a design thinker, educator, and process strategist. During his professional span, Halim occupied positions such as the International Council of Design (ICoD) Vice President and several times Chairperson of Arts and Design Departments at different universities. With more than 30 years of experience in the design field, Halim recently added a Ph.D. degree to his career, where his research topic investigated the contribution of design thinking in the knowledge economy and human centred community systems. Halim regularly confers on design thinking and creative strategies as tools for complex problem solving.

He also consults on projects related to business transformation and entrepreneurship, where he conducts analytical studies highlighting challenges, opportunities, and areas of interventions. Moreover, Halim has been working on developing experience and service design for destination management organizations (DMOs). Recently, Halim conceptualized the Bahrain Knowledge Bay endeavour which aims to build human centred community system using strategic design thinking as a catalyst.

With numerous earned awards for his work, Halim has participated in conferences and conducted workshops in a variety of institutions of higher education and corporate settings around the world, including Italy, Brazil, Korea, USA, Peru, Qatar, Jordan, and Lebanon. He has been interviewed by various media outlets in the Arab world as well as Europe.

Ibrahim Almojel is the founding partner of Khwarizmi Holding. Khwarizmi holding owns specialized investment companies in venture capital, private equity, industrial, and real estate. In VC, Khwarizmi invests in early-stage technology companies in MENA. In PE, the focus is on SMEs in Saudi Arabia in sectors impacted by Vision 2030. In real estate, Khwarizmi, through its affiliate Urbium Capital, invests in specialty housing the UK focusing on senior living and student accommodation. In industrial, Khwarizmi is focusing the vision 2030 sectors as defined by the National Industrial Development and Logistics Program.

Dr. Almojel sits on multiple boards including the Saudi National Bank (SNB), Saudi Telecom Company (STC), Hassana Investment Company, Awqaf Investment Company, Saudi Budget, Saudi EXIM bank, and the Saudi Integrated Logistics Zone company. He is a member of the 2019 Young Global Leaders of the World Economic Forum.

Dr. Almojel was the CEO of the Saudi Industrial Development Fund (SIDF), where he led the transformation of SIDF to align with Vision 2030. That was achieved through expanding the fund’s mandate include logistics, mining, and renewables and its offering to include a variety of financial programs and products and increased its capital from $17B to $28B. During his tenure,

Dr. Almojel was recognized by Forbes as one of the top CEOs in MENA in 2021 and 2022 and the King Abdulaziz Award for Quality at its gold level.

Previously he worked at Saudi Aramco as the CEO of Wisayah, the investment management arm of Saudi Aramco’s captive fund. Before that, he worked at multiple functions in Saudi Aramco’s corporate strategy, transformation program, and Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures and was recognized by Saudi Aramco’s corporate excellence award. He completed his BS in Electrical Engineering and Mathematics from Vanderbilt University, then an MS in Electrical Engineering, an MS and a PhD in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University.

Marco Vasconi is a Partner within Kearney’s Public Sector Practice and a founding member of the Center of Excellence for Human Capital Development at Kearney. Vasconi has dedicated his career and passion to serving key public and private sector clients in the education and labor sectors to make a positive impact on the economy and society. He focuses on helping decision-makers design inclusive and dynamic labor markets and develop a future-ready and resilient labor force equipped with relevant skills and values to realize their socio-economic ambitions.

Dr Margareta Drzeniek Hanouz is an economist, thought leader and expert on data-driven policy making, competitiveness, innovation and global risks. She led the World Economic Forum’s economics portfolio and global risks work and worked with governments and business to define high growth strategies using indicators, analysis and insight, and through multi-stakeholder processes. She is lead author or editor of a number of globally recognized benchmarking and insight reports, including The Global Competitiveness Report and the Global Risks Report series. For over a decade, she studied the economic development of the Middle East and North Africa Region, Eastern Europe and CIS and developed joint high impact work with OECD, WB and EBRD. Margareta designed the economics sessions of the Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos and successfully developed, fundraised and implemented large-scale trade development projects in Central and Eastern Europe at the International Trade Centre UNCTAD/WTO. She is a frequent public speaker, international media commentator and facilitator.