Professional Experience

 

2023 ◂ 2019 // FAO – Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN

Senior Product Development – Consultant for Agri-Systems

• Led the Development of 12 SaaS products in the past 4 years to achieve digital transformation for legacy Agri-Systems. In 2023: LSIPT Impact of Livestock Projects on GDP, Ex-ACT Carbon Emissions Assessment System, FERM Ecosystem Restoration Projects, Hand-in-Hand Country Dashboards. All projects have central data-science and geospatial components and technical end user base. Agri-Apps impact millions of small scale farmers by assisting policy makers in taking evidence based decisions.
• Managed the teams to process research and improvement workshops, consolidate project resources, establish UX design system and coordination with devs and oversaw first prototype implementations; projects are then handed over to IT department for further12-18 mo production.
• Legacy systems are mostly Excel based tools or older Java based systems migrated to AWS or GCP with front-end stacks using Python (for data science based projects), React, Flutter and others.

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2018 ◂ 2015 // Daman – National Health Insurance Company

Digital Strategy & Program Manager

• Headed the developed of 3 flagship innovation projects and 3 mobile health insurance products: The mHealth Partnership Program with leading mobile health apps (diabetes, pregnancy, weight control), the Daman Innovation Platform, and introduced Daman leadership to the concept of AI in 2016 which led to the Daman IBM Watson for Oncology Partnership Program.
• Liaised internally with Chiefs of Information, Marketing, Medical and Claims Officers in Daman as well as external startup consultancy firms in both Berlin and San Francisco, to ensure vertical integration of said mobile products. Managed the integration team and coordination with 3rd party developer to implement the adaptation to the UAE markets and Daman data infrastructure.
• The developed products targeted 16% of the Abu Dhabi population inflicted with diabetes, substantially reduced the pregnancy support team from 22 to 6 members, and attracted approx. 6k insured members to enroll in mobile app weight control program.

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2015 ◂ 2013 // Alpha Apps @ TwoFour54

Senior Product Experience Manager

• Key product developed: Sira app, an animated and interactive app of the life of Prophet Mohammad PBUH (in-house and self-published). Manage several client mobile application projects with focus on UX and content development. Reached +830k installs in 4 years.
• Manage client-facing project negotiations, business analysis, and internal UX project management. Coordinated with various stakeholders in the Sira app development, especially liaising with the General Authority for Islamic Affairs to ensure the endorsement of Islamic content.

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2015 ◂ 2013 // Abu Dhabi Department for Tourism & Culture

Knowledge & Information Manager

• Key product developed: Hamdoon Cartoon Series as executive producer to become a stand alone commercial product of the Authority. Product budget was 22M AED in 2012.
• Collective achievements are the digital transformation of several institutional knowledge bases:
  • Developing the first ADACH website and the intranet,
  • Establishing and streamlining publications pipeline and a central image database,
  • Acted as executive producer of several image films for the Authority,
  • Developed content strategy and managed two iPad apps for HH Sheikh Mansoor Festival,
  • Created the first social media accounts and established of respectable followership in the pre-social media boom era 170k in the first year on Twitter, and 20k on Instagram (2011-2013),
  • Coauthored the ADACH educations strategy, focusing on technology integrations,
  • Liaised with Volunteering Australia to help establish a cultural volunteers system, and finally
  • Co-managed milestone communication campaigns such as the “100 years Sheikh Zayed the first” campaign.
• My role encompassed leading at team of 11 (at peak) to cover four facets which mainly focus on technology as a enabler:
  1. Knowledge & Information Management
  2. Strategy  & Concept Development
  3. Project Management
  4. UX Strategy and Design Management

 

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Academic Timeline

 

1999 ◂ 1996. FU Berlin

• 6 Post Grad Semesters – Biochemistry

1995 ◂ 1992. RWTH Aachen

• 6 Post Grad Semesters – Chemistry

1990 ◂ 1987. American University Beirut

• Bachelor of Science – Chemistry