Director, Leadership & Empowerment, Emirates Foundation
In his capacity as Director of Leadership and Empowerment with the Emirates Foundation, Mohamed leads the UAE national Takatof volunteering social program and the Sanid emergency response volunteering program since 2013. With over 15 years actively advancing volunteer engagement by individuals and corporate organizations and extensive leadership experience in strategy and operations, he leads the development and scaling of the national online volunteering platform launched in 2017 – www.volunteers.ae – currently with over 400k volunteers and over 400 public and private organizations registered, actively engaging and empowering volunteers to extend their contribution in every sector, locally in the United Arab Emirates, regionally and globally through his close affiliation with the public, semi-government, academic, private and the non-profit sectors within the UAE.
His recent national leadership engagements include partnering with the Special Olympics in the training and deployment of hundreds of volunteer leaders for the Special Olympics MENA Region in 2018 and the World Special Olympics in Abu Dhabi in 2019. Mohamed sponsored the winning bid for the 26th IAVE World Volunteer Conference in Abu Dhabi, UAE, for the Emirates Foundation to be the host organization for IAVE’s 26th World Volunteer Conference in 2022. He also co-led joint projects with IAVE to deliver seven global volunteering webinars and one volunteering idea-thon in 2020. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Mohamed leads his team to deploy hundreds of volunteers in supporting emergency and health institutions. He is currently partnered with the World Expo 2020 to be held in Dubai from October 2021 to March 2022, and oversees the recruitment of over 25,000 volunteers through a centralized online system.
At the Arab Region level, Mohamed works on regional partnerships in tune with innovative developments around volunteering and collaboration with various volunteer centers. He works tirelessly with his counterparts to implement the best international practices in the field of volunteering and youth development and optimize their innovative potential. Mohamed strongly believes in the synergy of bringing together diverse groups/networks of leaders of volunteering to encourage discussion, reflection and learning, focus on specific issues challenging volunteering and delivering social impact.