Team size: 9

What are the key projects that you have been involved in over the past 12 months?

I led a GCC conglomerate as Group Chief Legal Officer on a cross-border alliance in Syria across the automotive/transport/car leasing and hospitality/real estate/property developments, with education as an enabling track. The work covered legal and compliance frameworks, concessions, corporate structuring, partner selection, and ESG safeguards. The plan includes a nationwide dealership network and a 3,000-bus operation with significant employment potential, and a plan for a multi-hotel and coastal real-estate projects under an MoU with the Syrian Investment Authority, reinforced by a large-scale humanitarian initiative.

How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crises, and how does your legal strategy align with the broader business strategy to ensure the organisation’s resilience?

During periods of instability or crisis, my approach to managing legal aspects is grounded in speed, clarity, and alignment with the organisation’s strategic priorities. My first responsibility is to protect people, preserve cash flow, and ensure business continuity. I lead through a centralised legal control room that spans multiple sectors – hospitality, real estate, automotive, leasing, education, and publishing – allowing us to monitor risk channels in real time and coordinate responses across divisions with consistency and speed.

In a crisis, I convene a cross-functional team to act as a unified command centre, enabling rapid decision-making and defensible action. We maintain live dashboards for each country, tracking security risks, sanctions, FX controls, and access to ports, airports, and courts, all tied to specific contractual levers such as suspension, hardship, or step-in rights. Financial resilience is a priority, so we ring-fence cash flows using escrow arrangements, receivables assignments, and lender protocols, while accelerating lawful collections and recovery actions to prevent leakage.

Contracts are structured with reversibility in mind, incorporating flexible governing laws, arbitration routes, and evidence preservation mechanisms to maintain optionality. I also engage directly with regulators to secure operational exemptions – such as curfews, visas, and permits – ensuring our businesses can function safely and compliantly. Insurance is treated as a strategic tool, not a fallback, with coordinated coverage across political risk, business interruption, and cargo, timed to preserve force majeure claims. Data continuity is safeguarded through strict residency protocols, cyber protections, and lawful cross-border transfer paths to support remote operations.

Throughout, legal strategy is tightly aligned with business strategy: we protect core revenue engines, enable growth through pre-structured joint ventures and financing safeguards, preserve brand trust through transparent stakeholder engagement, and maintain flexibility to redeploy capital and resources swiftly. In times of uncertainty, legal becomes the anchor – ensuring resilience, enabling agility, and reinforcing the organisation’s ability to navigate complexity with confidence.