Chair, IAPP UAE Chapter
The International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) is the world’s largest community of privacy and AI governance professionals. Its UAE chapter is the regional home for that community — the meetups, working groups, and cross-industry conversations that turn a professional discipline into a coherent practice.
As chapter chair I lead that community locally. In practice that means:
- Convening chapter events on emerging topics — AI regulation in the region, ISO/IEC 42001 implementation, cross-border data transfer, and the interaction between privacy and AI governance frameworks.
- Coordinating with the global IAPP on regional programming and certification pathways.
- Building the connective tissue between privacy professionals, AI governance professionals, regulators, and academia across the UAE and the wider GCC.
Co-author, IAPP AIGP textbook
The AIGP — Artificial Intelligence Governance Professional — is IAPP’s flagship certification for the AI governance profession. Its official textbook is the curriculum the field trains on.
I co-authored the AI Risk Management chapter of that textbook. That chapter maps directly to the ISO/IEC 23894 risk workstream that runs through 42001 — a deliberate bridge between the certification-body training and the standards those bodies will assess against.
Writing curriculum, unlike writing commentary, requires deciding what the profession must know to be considered competent. It is a slower, more consequential form of contribution than analysis alone.
Why community work matters
Standards, advisory practice, and certification are not enough on their own. A profession needs vocabulary, precedent, and the sense of being a we. That is what community work builds.