Strategy & Investment Professional
Bahraini strategy professional with ~5 years of experience at McKinsey & Company advising SWFs and developers in the GCC. Native Arabic speaker with an MSc in Finance, specializing in portfolio strategy, due diligences, and large-scale project structuring.
Career journey
From investment banking exposure to top-tier consulting, building expertise across GCC markets
Jan 2026 — Present
Dubai, UAE
Operating as an independent strategy professional available to support global management consultancies and professional services firms with flexible engagement leadership and specialized execution capacity on complex public sector mandates.
Jun — Dec 2025
Dubai, UAE
Exploring ideas, coaching prospective candidates for MBB consulting on PrepLounge, and writing on Substack (The Gulf Between).
Oct 2020 — May 2025
McKinsey & Company, Dubai
Led SWF portfolio strategy, commercial due diligence, and mega-project structuring across KSA and UAE. Built dynamic financial models (DCF, DDM, feasibility) for IC decision-making. Advised on real estate business plans, theme park destination strategy, and geopolitical risk assessments.
Education
2019 — 2020
Cass Business School (now Bayes), London
Thesis on GCC fixed exchange rate volatility. Developed expertise in financial modeling, portfolio theory, and emerging market dynamics.
2016 — 2019
University of Kent, Canterbury
Thesis on GCC labour markets. President of Kent Debating Society (2018-2019), running weekly debates and public speaking workshops with events attracting 100+ attendees.
Internships
Jul — Aug 2019
Derasat — Centre for Strategic, International and Energy Studies, Bahrain
Assisted Director of Research (head economist) in conducting academic research on wealth taxes and Zakat, analyzing public policy solutions to wealth inequality.
Jun — Aug 2018
J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Dubai
Constructed business cases for Treasury Services and Equities in KSA/UAE. Estimated business impact of KSA inclusion to MSCI EM Index. Shadowed traders during the 2018 Turkish Lira Crisis.
Jul — Aug 2017
Bahrain Economic Development Board (EDB)
Curated 20+ business profiles on GCC developers and RE players with potential interest in expanding into Bahrain's real estate sector.
Selected work
Highlights from engagements across private capital, real estate, and public sector advisory
Current initiatives
Leveraging ~5 years of tier-one consulting experience to advise public and private sector clients on their most critical strategic challenges.
Focus areas:
• Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs)
• Economic policy & fiscal sustainability
• Real estate
Independent publication analyzing GCC socio-economic trends, leveraging systems thinking to challenge conventional regional narratives on economic diversification, fiscal policy, and urbanization.
Coaching prospective candidates for MBB consulting in the Middle East, supporting case interview preparation and application strategy for aspiring consultants targeting top-tier firms.
Consulting engagements
Assessed and baselined sector/sub-sector strategies for a regional SWF across all covered sectors, mapping investment priorities & portfolio companies to 30+ industry value chains and identifying cross-sectoral opportunities for inter-PC collaboration.
Led commercial and financial diligence on a proposed import/export platform investment, assessing unit economics, CapEx intensity, regulatory and financing constraints, portfolio synergies, and post-close operating model readiness to support an IC-level go/no-go decision.
Led a workstream helping to materialize a GCC commercial & residential real estate mega-project, specifically via JV structuring, securing government incentives, and drafting playbooks for building on-site project teams.
Conducted a business plan refresh exercise for a large RE developer across its infrastructure, public amenities and assessed PPP opportunities for recovery of large capital expenditure spend items.
Assessed and re-estimated a business strategy for a theme park / hotel destination offering across revenue drivers including package design choices, pricing, and total visitation based on population growth projections and relevant benchmarks.
Developed incentive packages for a national investment entity on a deal/sectoral basis, via defined allocation approach across geographies and industries, and re-defined intra-committee governance model.
Secured ~10% annual savings for a GCC city-level government department by aggregating CapEx/OpEx requests from 20 sub-entities, running ROI/NPV screens, and tightening spend-approval gates.
Led public finance workstream following consolidation of 4 government entities into single authority; realized 15% recurrent cost savings post-integration.
Developed a medium-term fiscal framework for a city-level government entity, identifying commercial monetization avenues for non-core assets and optimizing municipal revenue streams to reduce sovereign subsidy dependence.
Assessed regional implications of April 2025 tariff announcements, identifying key geopolitical risks and strategic priorities for affected client sectors along lenses of economic growth, fiscal and monetary sustainability, trade and localization.
Honest self-assessment
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Interested in discussing SWF strategy, real estate mega-projects, or GCC economic trends? I'm always open to conversations with like-minded professionals.