Leadership
Rashid Al-Naimi
Chairman
Vice President Administration, Qatar Foundation
Rashid Al-Naimi is presently the Vice President of Administration for the Qatar Foundation. Mr. Al-Naimi carries portfolio responsibility for the administrative and operational functions of the Foundation, including the shared services areas of Finance, Procurement, Information Technology, Human Resources and Support Services.
This Billion dollar initiative will support the State of Qatar as it transforms to a knowledge-based society. Mr. Al-Naimi's breadth of experience encompasses a wide spectrum of the business lifecycle from conception, to production, from supply chain, to delivering cost effective world-class products and services.
He holds an outstanding record for performance in delivering successful restructuring and turn-around programmes by creating team-oriented environments that focus on continuous improvement to increase shareholder value.
Ghada P. El-Rassi
Business Process Improvement Director
& Advisor to the Chairman
As Business Process Improvement Director and Advisor to the Chairman, Ghada is responsible for facilitating process innovation, strategic planning, competitive analysis and other corporate initiatives for MEEZA’s executive team and the office of the Chairman.
Ghada has over 17 years of experience working with ERP software systems. In building her professional career she has gained specialist business and technical experience which is leveraged to help build and maintain well-structured, agile and dynamic environments with clear guidelines and procedures.
Ghada also develops and promotes effective and efficient communication channels within corporations to achieve sustainable synergies among individual staff members and across teams.
Steve O’Donnell
Chief Executive Officer
Steve O’Donnell is the CEO of MEEZA and is leading the MEEZA team to drive growth and deliver on the strategic objectives of the company. Prior to joining MEEZA, Steve worked in leadership positions for a number of large, global data centre and IT organisations including First Data Corporation, British Telecom, Cable & Wireless, Deutsche Bank and Lehman Brothers.
Steve has an international reputation in the data centre industry and, most recently, was Managing Director for ESG, a professional services firm guiding global clients such as HP, IBM and Dell on how to deliver effective cloud services and solutions.
Steve has a keen interest in sustainability and the environment and whilst at BT won a number of awards for leading BT’s 21st Century data centre projects.
Andrew Coll
Chief Financial Officer
Andrew Coll qualified as a chartered accountant with PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP in 1996 before moving into a senior finance position in Cable & Wireless PLC in the UK. He was seconded to undertake overseas strategic finance projects in the Far East working with Hong Kong Telecom, Optus and CT Macau.
Since then he has worked in Senior Finance roles in London. Andrew joins us from System C Healthcare where he was since January 2006. System C is listed on the London Stock Exchange and provides software and solutions to the healthcare sector. System C has tripled its revenues and its market capitalisation in the last 4 years.
As well as his financial responsibilities, Andrew led System C’s M&A strategy, including negotiations and the execution of 5 acquisitions in 2 years and a significant share placing in July 2009. System C has a blue chip shareholder base including Blackrock, Artemis, Fidelity, M&G and Guy Hands amongst others.
James Fanella
Vice President Sales & Marketing
Jim brings over 25 years of experience in the high tech industry with proven success in leading direct sales, channel management, professional services and marketing.
Jim has held senior level positions including Senior Vice President of Yahoo! where he led their Global Enterprise Solutions Group, which included Enterprise Portals, Streaming Media, Small Business, and Electronic Storefronts all of which accounted for over 20% of the company’s worldwide revenues. In addition, Jim was a Managing Partner for Unisys, leading all of their financial services consulting in the United States. Jim also served as Chief Operating Officer for Computer Network Technology, a $500 million storage networking company.
Ian Cross
Vice President Operations
As Vice President of Operations, Ian leads MEEZA’s delivery function. Ian’s goal is to ensure that MEEZA is recognised as the leading regional IT services provider for customer experience and delivery excellence. He is responsible for infrastructure, architecture, engineering, service operations and client services.
Ian has held senior management positions in leading managed services organisations, including CIO at Netstore plc and later as Operations Director for 2e2 UK Ltd. In these roles, Ian led transformational IT programmes to build new data centre capacity, implement shared service platforms and integrate teams from multiple historical businesses.
In his earlier career, Ian provided enterprise architecture consulting services to companies including Barclays Bank, UBS and Deutsche Bank.
Michael Molson
Vice President Solutions & Services
As VP of Solutions and Services, Mike is responsible for ensuring clients receive world-class solutions to meet their business imeratives. Specifically, Michael is accountable for Solutions Management, Consulting and Project Management Services.
Prior to arriving in Qatar, Michael played pivotal roles in the success of a number of high-growth start-up businesses and established technology companies in Canada and Europe.
He has held technical leadership and management positions across a wide range of functions including service strategy and innovation, pre-sales engineering, technical and customer operations, enterprise architecture and data centre management with organisations such as Ontario Power Generation (Nuclear), AT&T Canada, MTS/Allstream and MessageLabs Group.
DR. Jaouad Alkhaliki
Director Consulting Services
Dr. Jaouad leads MEEZA’s Consulting Services. He aims to establish MEEZA as a thought leader in the MENA region and is contributing to establishing Qatar’s knowledge based society.
Dr. Jaouad brings 15 years of experience from industries including IT, petroleum, digital media, automotive, aerospace, biosciences and manufacturing.
Before joining MEEZA, and after his research and teaching in France, Dr. Jaouad held various senior positions in companies like Renault and IBM; focusing on innovation, strategy and technology advisory. He lead & delivered cutting-edge projects in distributed computing, grid technology and simulation — designing and engineering solutions centred around ubiquitous computing.
Dr. Jaouad started his business life by creating a start-up developing and selling realistic 3D rendering software.
Shaun Connor
Human Resources Director
As Human Resources Director, Shaun is responsible for MEEZA’s human resources initiatives with particular emphasis on talent management, candidate attraction, retention and development, cultural diversity, leadership and people development.
Shaun brings many years of international experience in senior and executive human resources positions serving major MNCs such as Barclaycard, Sony, AXA Insurance and Lawson software in roles in Europe, North America and the Middle East.
Tajedin Idris Babekir
Head of Legal
Tajedin Babekir is the Legal Advisor of MEEZA. In this role Taj works to enable the organisation to identify and appropriately manage all legal risk associated with the business and to ensure full compliance with the laws and regulations in all legal issues.
Taj brings 13 years of solid experience in Corporate Law, Commercial Law and Intellectual Property Law as well as extensive experience in litigation characterised by front and senior positions in top law firms.
Before joining MEEZA, Taj worked at several Law Firms as attorney and legal counsel where he handled complex transactions and drafted and reviewed agreements and documents of a legal nature.
Taj holds LL.B and LL.M degrees.