Paula is Head of Construction Engineering & Projects for the Middle East Region. Based in Bahrain since 2009, she specialises in construction projects throughout the region, in particular Bahrain, Oman, and Qatar Her extensive experience includes real estate and development, regeneration, infrastructure and utilities, hotels, leisure and tourism, residential, industrial and commercial, education and healthcare, both in the private and public sectors. Paula acts on behalf of government and regulatory clients including Ministry of Works, project employers and developers, lenders and investors, contractors, subcontractors and consultants.
Projects Paula has worked on include Shangri-La Oman, Bahrain National Assembly, Durrat Al Bahrain, Doha Convention Center, Bahrain Bay to include Four Seasons Hotel, Riffa Views, Diyar Al Muharraq, Bahrain Airport, King Abdullah Medical City, Education City Doha, Lusail Doha, Investment Gateway Bahrain and Reef Island. Paula also assisted the Bahrain Ministry of Works in the drafting and publication to market of its first ever Standard Suite of Construction Contracts (2009 Edition) based on FIDIC forms.

Before joining the Royal University for Women in Bahrain, Dr. Borea lectured at University of Salerno, Post-Graduate School for Legal Careers, Faculty of Law and at University of Rome “La Sapienza”. Visiting Research Fellow at Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg, over the years, he has been a visiting Lecturer at the Catholic University of Bogota’ and CAECE University of Mar del Plata.
He is the author of several publications in the field of Intern
ational Law and member of the scientific committees of several international conferences. Dr. Borea is also a practicing lawyer, arbitrator and legal adviser. He served as legal counsel for members of the Italian Parliament in Rome and as legal expert for the Italian Prime Minister’s Office, Department of European Affairs, in Brussels.
He attended as an expert several international governmental meetings such as the G20 and G8 world leaders’ summits as well as the EU-GCC Joint Council and Ministerial Meeting. He is a “Knight of the Order of the Star of Italy”, inducted by the President of the Italian Republic. He is fluent in Italian, English, Spanish and French.

Stepehen has over 20 years of legal and business leadership experience, much of it in the mining and energy sectors.
He joined Ma’aden in September 2013 where has led and further developed the legal, compliance and corporate governance functions.
At Ma’aden he is a member of the company’s executive committee and leads legal aspects of all strategic transactions in which the company is involved including debt and equity financings, M&A, joint ventures, world-scale construction projects, and disputes.
Before joining Ma’aden, Stephen was the general counsel and corporate secretary of a mining company with operations in Canada, Cuba and Madagascar.
Previously he worked with the North American subsidiary of a UK-based FTSE 30 energy company, where he held senior in-house legal roles and spent over four years leading corporate development.
Prior to that, Stephen was an equity partner in one of Canada’s leading law firms.

Dr. Hamid specialises in Dispute Resolution, cross-border transactions, Waqfs and Wealth Planning, Corporate law, and Employment law.
He has various publications, most important of which is his recent book titled ‘Towards the Reform of Private Waqfs: A Comparative Study of Islamic Waqfs and English Trusts (Brill 2015)’.

Khalifah is the Chairman of the leading law firm in Kuwait, Al Yaqout Legal Group.
Khalifah is an international speaker and a familiar face in international legal seminars and workshops.
Khalifah was the Ex-President of National Students Union of the UAE
He was also the President of the Social Committee of the Kuwait Lawyers’ Association.
Khalifah is an Attorney and Arbitrator licensed to appear before all levels of courts and arbitration.
He regularly participates in functions and seminars organized by Commercial Law Development Program (CLDP) of US Govt, and International Bar Association (IBA) across the globe.

Mansoor heads AMJ’s top tier, award-winning Corporate Commercial department.
A UK-qualified barrister, Mansoor has more than 30 years’ experience of law and practice in Oman in both the contentious and non-contentious fields.
He is a recognised expert on Oman’s legislative and regulatory frameworks due to his involvement in many of the jurisdiction’s most significant transactions over the past four decades.
He is also a listed Oman Court of Appeal arbitrator and enjoys rights of audience before Oman’s Supreme Court.

Mubarak founded Al-Sulaiti Law Firm in 2002. Since then, Al-Sulaiti Law Firm has become one of the most reputable law firms in Qatar.
Mubarak previously headed the Legal Affairs Department in the Ministry of Transportation in Qatar.
Mubarak served as the general secretary of the Doha International Airport’s board of directors.
He has extensive experience in the different fields of the Qatari law, especially in commercial, civil, criminal, labor, real estate, sports law, and arbitration.

Prior to establishing his practice in 1999, Sultan worked for Qatar Petroleum (QP) for 22 years.
During the last three years of his career with QP, he served as Managing Counsel and in this capacity represented the government of the State of Qatar and QP and its subsidiaries in major transactions as a lead negotiator.
In his private practice, Sultan has counseled, and negotiated on behalf of, local and multinational clients on major business transactions and projects.

Joanne is an experienced counsel with both private practice and in-house backgrounds and has held various senior legal management positions in different industries including Retail, Manufacturing, FSI and Technology.
Joanne worked and advised on a large number of opportunities and issues across EMEA and LATAM, allowing her to build extensive knowledge in multiple areas of the law across jurisdictions and strong capabilities in risk management, governance and compliance.
Based in Dubai, she has been covering the GCC for 10 years and is now primarily focusing on supporting public and private sector organisations across the region to embrace technology and digitally transform with best in class governance and compliance in mind.

Dean of the College of Law at Sultan Qaboos University (Oman) for 2009 to 2012
Dean of the College of Law at The University of Modern Sciences (UAE) from 2015 to 2016
Legal Expert within Baker & McKenzie-Habib Al-Mollah Law Firm for the issuance of a new Federal Maritime Law of the UAE
Author of 26 Research and 22 Textbooks and Handbooks in Arabic, English and French concerning the laws of Egypt, Lebanon, and Oman.
Author of a Textbook of Commercial Law according to the Law of UAE is under press

Dr. Gordon has wide-ranging experience in all types of international commercial and investment arbitration in both the common and civil law legal systems.
Having acted as advising counsel and arbitrator under most leading institutional arbitration rules (ICC, LCIA, DIFC-LCIA, DIAC, ADCCAC, GAFTA, GCC, JAMS, SCC, etc.) and ad hoc in arbitrations seated in the US, Europe and the Middle East in relation to a variety of industry sectors, including construction/real estate, corporate, oil & gas, information technology, banking & finance etc.
Dr. Gordon speaks regularly on international arbitration and has published over 200 books and articles on international arbitration, including Comparison of Gulf International Arbitration Rules (2010), Comparison of MENA International Arbitration Rules (2011) and Arbitration in the MENA (2016), all three published by Juris, and most recently Commentary on the UAE Arbitration Chapter, Sweet & Maxwell (2017). In the 2014 and 2015 editions of The Legal 500.
He is a member and Vice Chair of the Steering Committee of the UAE-ICC Commission on Arbitration & ADR and on the editorial board of a number of leading arbitration journals, including in particular Arbitration, the journal of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators.

After seven years as corporate counsel at Barilla HQ in Italy (FMCG), he moved in 2011 to J&J in Bruxelles (Belgium) as Senior Counsel of the pharmaceutical group for Turkey, Middle East, Africa and Israel.
As of November 2015, he has been located in Dubai where, in addition to his previous responsibilities, he serves as a member of the Board of Directors and Corporate Secretary of J&J Middle East FZ LLC (new J&J hub for the region).

Souhayel joined Mashreqbank in Dubai in 2012 after his experience in Tunisia and in France with BNP Paribas Corporate and Investment Banking.
At Mashreqbank and as a senior legal advisor, Souhayel was mainly in charge of the legal matters related to corporate banking, international banking and Treasury and Capital Markets.
He then joined Commercial Bank of Dubai in December 2013 where he is currently holding the positon of Chief Legal and Governance Officer reporting to Chief Executive Officer as well as to the Chairman of the Board of Directors.

Jean-Michel started his career in France as an international trade and shipping advocate.
He has practiced in France with Quimbert & Associates and Clyde & Co.
He moved to the Middle East in 2006 with Clyde & Co and then joined Al Aidarous of which he manages the Abu Dhabi office.
With twelve years of practice in the Middle East he has developed, beside its core specialties, a general commercial law practice for clients in various sector of activities (Defense, Energy, Trade etc.).
He also remains very engaged in academia and lectures at various universities.
He also provides his expertise to the work of certain public international organizations

Michael has extensive practitioner and academic law contacts across Europe; in Qatar, UAE (Abu Dhabi and Dubai), Bahrain and Oman; and also in the US (New York and Washington DC in particular).
In April 2013 he was invited to speak by the European Parliament at a hearing on Reform of the Court of Justice of the European Union, organised by the Committee on Legal Affairs. The topic of his presentation was Access to court documents, and access to justice.
With extensive experience of international and domestic supply contracts, Michael specialises in commercial and indirect tax litigation, especially civil aspects of alleged missing trader (MTIC) fraud; international commercial arbitration; EU law, including; References to the CJEU; judicial review challenges to Government departments (especially, HMRC); commercial application of competition law; construction and other infrastructure litigation; and professional negligence claims (surveyors, solicitors, accountants and auditors).

Dr. Hassan’ practice areas include all forms of Civil and Commercial Litigation, Arbitration, ADR, Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign judgments and Arbitral Awards.
As an arbitrator, he has extensive experience and arbitrated several claims under leading international arbitration institutions.
He provides expert opinions on the UAE laws before arbitral tribunals and foreign courts.

Experienced General Counsel with a demonstrated history of working in the private and government sector as a trusted advisor across a broad range of areas.
Skilled in M&A, Investment Advisory, Securities Regulation, Investment Management, Joint Ventures, and Sovereign Debt. Strong legal professional with a focus on Corporate Law.
Ms Ahmad has experience working both in the UK and UAE, were she has worked with several international firms.

Diane is a dual-qualified French lawyer and UK Solicitor, heading the international telecom practice at Pinsent Masons.
She started her career in Singapore in 1994 and has worked extensively in Asia, Europe, Africa and Middle East.
She specialises in and has extensive experience advising a wide range of clients in the telecommunications and technology sectors (including IT, the digital economy and e-commerce and Healthcare).
In particular, Diane focuses on complex multi-discipline, cross-border transactions, which have earned her the reputation as an expert in this field.
Her clients seek her advice notably on entry into new markets (whether they are emerging countries or challenging /post-war jurisdictions), cross border telecoms and IT transactions, digital transformation projects in a number of highly regulated areas such as digital entertainment.
Her expertise has also been praised by clients in the context of cyber security issues, whether they arise for telecom operators, or technology and e-commerce operators, or by way of judicial/police authority investigations for lawful intercepts or for high-risk situations such as data breaches or cyber-attacks.
In relation to digital transformation projects, Diane has developed extensive experience on smart cities project (either newly-built or retrofit) and regularly provides advice to networks providers, local councils, infrastructure consultants on the roll out of networks and integrated systems.

Dr. Olawuyi is an international energy Lawyer, an accredited arbitrator, eminent academic and a leading expert in the fields of natural resources, energy and environmental law in the GCC and the MENA region.
Dr. Olawuyi has published several peer-reviewed articles, books, and reports on energy finance, energy infrastructure projects, and local content requirements. His most recent publication is The Human Rights-Based Approach to Carbon Finance (Cambridge University Press, 2016). He has lectured on energy and environmental law in Europe, North America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
Dr. Olawuyi has previously worked as an energy lawyer at Norton Rose Fulbright Canada LLP, Calgary, Alberta
Dr. Olawuyi is among the first to have clarified and compiled how local content policies have evolved in petroleum contracts in the GCC and the MENA region, therefore providing a risk analysis and assessment tool for oil and gas companies in the region.

Dr. Jamal is regarded as one of the UAE’s leading personalities in the field of judiciary and public prosecution.
His extensive experience and in-depth knowledge of the country’s judicial and legal system has been instrumental in his appointment in Dubai Courts in 2005.In 2008, he became the Director-General of Dubai Judicial Institute (DJI).
Dr. Jamal writes on various judicial and legal topics and issues in his regular weekly articles for Al Emarate Alyoum Newspaper and the Dubai Judicial Institute Magazine.
He has also written a book titled “Companies Law According to the Judicial Precedents and Legal Principles of the Cassation Court in Dubai,” which was showcased in Sharjah International Book Fair in 2009, not to mention his book titled “Dubai…The Inspiration”.
In 2005, Dr. Jamal started his career in the judiciary, where he was appointed as a judge in Dubai Courts; then, Director General of Dubai Judicial Institute in 2008.
Since 2004, Dr. Jamal has been giving lectures in Dubai Police Academy on maritime law and corporate law, in addition to being a board member of the academy, and a DJI lecturer.
In 1999 and 2005, he received the Rashid Award for Excellence. Dr. Jamal has also been awarded the “Dubai Court’s Excellence Award” in 2007 and the Community Service Medal of the Ministry of the Interior 2014.

Dr. Maan is a prominent lawyer in civil law and has wide knowledge of both the Lebanese and French civil proceedings and procedures, and can thoroughly deal with comparative lawsuits in the MENA region.
Dr. Maan has published a large number of legal articles covering mainly the theory of contracts and obligations in the UAE as well as other lectures on comparative law, internal and international arbitration.