Author: Sayli

As the famous Jimmy Dean quote reminds us, “I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.”

Resilience is the key to keep going, both in personal and professional lives. Handling a crisis in business is the ultimate test of leading an entrepreneurial life.

There are guiding angels like Waleed Aldakheel, Founder and CEO of Continuity Consultancy firm. His professional prowess spans more than three decades, encompassing aspects like IT service management, risk assessment, business continuity, and crisis leadership.

Coming from a technical school and IT operations background, he grew acutely aware of how profoundly modern life and organizational performance rely on technology. That awareness naturally led him to confront a critical concern: what happens when technology fails, whether partially or completely?

Through first-hand involvement in emergencies and crises, he learned that rapid judgment and strategic decision-making are essential to restoring operations, enabling organizations to respond decisively and sustain continuity under pressure.

Execution-Driven Leadership

Waleed’s early career managing large-scale technology projects at SAMBA gave him end-to-end exposure to complex project lifecycles from concept and design through execution, testing, and delivery, laying the groundwork for his long-term leadership philosophy.

This hands-on experience fostered a strong systems-thinking mindset, enabling him to understand how technology works. In later continuity and resilience roles, this perspective helped him anticipate cascading impacts, identify single points of failure, and design more integrated resilience strategies. These included:

• Managing complex initiatives also instilled a disciplined, structured approach centered on clear scope definition, stakeholder alignment, progress tracking, and proactive risk identification. These fundamentals translated naturally into crisis and continuity leadership, where clarity and structure are critical under uncertainty.
• Early exposure to cross-functional collaboration proved equally formative. Working with IT teams, business leaders, vendors, and executives shaped him into a connector who aligns diverse stakeholders and builds consensus, an essential capability for enterprise-wide resilience programs.
• Vendor and partner management sharpened his judgment around accountability, service quality, and contractual clarity. This experience later informed his ability to assess third-party risk, negotiate service-level expectations, and ensure external partners meet continuity requirements.
• Navigating tight deadlines, shifting scopes, and technical challenges taught him how to lead under pressure. Staying composed and decisive in complex project environments became a direct foundation for effective crisis and emergency management.
• Most importantly, delivering measurable outcomes early in his career helped Waleed build credibility through execution. This results-driven mindset continues to define his leadership style, ensuring resilience and continuity programs move beyond design to successful, organization-wide implementation.

Leveraging Experience

At NCB, he gained critical insights from managing the large-scale integration of treasury and finance systems across both conventional and Islamic banking, where alignment across dual banking models proved essential. The insights he gained were:

• He learned that early coordination between Shariah governance, finance, operations, and IT was a decisive success factor, ensuring that shared infrastructure accurately reflected distinct structural and compliance requirements.

• The transformation reinforced a core principle: business ownership must drive technology. Progress accelerated when treasury, finance, and risk leaders actively shaped process design, data definitions, and controls rather than deferring to technical teams.
• End-to-end process clarity emerged as another key lesson. Tracing transaction flows from front office to general ledger helped surface hidden dependencies, reconciliation gaps, and integration risks before they became systemic issues.

Waleed adds, “End-to-end process clarity prevents downstream failures.”

• Strong vendor governance was non-negotiable. Clear expectations, escalation paths, and quality controls across multiple platforms and partners were critical to maintaining consistency and momentum.
• Data quality proved to be the backbone of transformation. Early investment in data cleansing, mapping, and governance delivered long-term stability and reliable reporting across both banking models.
• Finally, his resilience background underscored the importance of embedding operational resilience into system design from the outset, ensuring continuity, monitoring, and recovery capabilities were integral to the transformation rather than retrofitted later.

Operational Cohesion

Then at Saudi Hollandi Bank, Waleed ensured cohesion across IT services, PMO, change management, procurement, and incident response by aligning structure, culture, and communication around a shared objective: delivering stable, secure, and compliant banking operations. He approached these mission-critical functions as a single ecosystem, where each team clearly understood its role in service reliability, operational resilience, and customer impact.

He asserts, “True cohesion comes from creating an ecosystem where every function understands its role in delivering stable, secure, and compliant banking operations.”

A unified governance framework formed the backbone of this cohesion. Clear policies, defined decision-making structures, standardized reporting, aligned KPIs, shared risk and control requirements, and common approval workflows ensured consistency across all domains. This was reinforced by a strong “service-first” mindset, helping teams move beyond functional silos and evaluate decisions based on business impact rather than departmental priorities.

Integrated planning and cross-functional forums played a central role in maintaining alignment. Regular collaboration across IT operations, PMO, procurement, and change management created transparency around project timelines, release cycles, vendor performance, incident trends, and resource constraints. Shared tools and centralized dashboards further strengthened coordination by consolidating project tracking, change approvals, procurement pipelines, and incident reporting into a single operational view.

Risk and continuity principles were embedded across every function, creating a common risk lens. Procurement assessed vendor resilience, the PMO incorporated business impact and risk assessments, change management aligned with operational resilience standards, and IT services worked in close coordination with incident response teams to protect critical services. Alongside these structural elements, Waleed emphasized communication and cultural alignment through transparency from leadership, shared objectives, cross-training opportunities, and an environment where teams escalated early and collaborated naturally.

Clear ownership and accountability were equally essential. Each function was led by empowered leaders who understood how their decisions affected upstream and downstream activities across the organization. Finally, a continuous improvement loop drawing on post-incident reviews, change retrospectives, vendor evaluations, and project lessons learned ensured that all functions evolved together, reinforcing maturity and long-term operational cohesion.

Headship Principles

At Riyadh Bank, Waleed led an ambitious resilience effort that included developing more than 137 business and IT recovery plans and delivering a fully operational HOT disaster recovery data center. Achieving this level of organizational preparedness required a leadership style grounded in strategic vision, execution discipline, and influence across the enterprise.

He approached resilience with strong systems thinking, viewing business processes, IT infrastructure, and risk dependencies as a single operational ecosystem. This enabled him to translate enterprise risk into a clear, long-term recovery strategy and prioritize initiatives based on impact and business value. Success also depended on deep cross-functional collaboration, as coordinating recovery planning across numerous business units and technology teams required alignment at both executive and operational levels.

He combined technical and operational expertise with rigorous program leadership, ensuring consistent governance, quality assurance, and documentation across all recovery plans. He demonstrated decisive leadership under uncertainty, balancing data-driven decisions with the realities of incomplete information inherent in disaster scenarios. Just as critical was his ability to drive change, building stakeholder understanding, overcoming resistance, and embedding a culture of preparedness. Clear communication, regulatory discipline, and repeated testing through simulations and exercises reinforced confidence that the organization could respond effectively when disruptions occurred.

Deployments

Waleed served as Business Continuity Services Manager at Al Rajhi Bank, where he founded the Business Continuity Services Department. He developed BCM policies, procedures, and frameworks; conducted technical and business impact analyses; defined enterprise recovery strategies; and delivered comprehensive business and IT recovery plans, including the bank’s crisis management framework. His tenure also included managing the implementation of BCM tools, establishing a 500-seat business recovery site and an IT disaster recovery center with PPRS, executing all testing programs, ensuring regulatory compliance, managing departmental budgets, and coordinating closely with third-party vendors.

Maturity

As a Head of Business Continuity and Crisis Management at Saudi Fransi Bank, Waleed leads an enterprise-wide operational resilience, business continuity, disaster recovery, and crisis management programs aligned with ISO 22301, the SAMA BCM Framework, and National Risk Council requirements. His work has focused on strengthening organizational resilience by embedding best practices that safeguard service availability, regulatory compliance, and operational stability.

In this role, Waleed has driven comprehensive business impact analyses, risk and gap assessments, and the institutionalization of standardized resilience, BCM, and disaster recovery frameworks. He established strong governance and control structures, implemented organization-wide awareness and training programs, and served as the central point of engagement for audit, compliance, and regulatory bodies. His leadership includes the design and management of a Tier III–certified IT disaster recovery center and the development of a business recovery site supporting 270 concurrent workstations. He also led the implementation of the bank’s crisis command center and crisis management plan, elevated organizational standards to meet SAMA maturity requirements, and prepared the institution for enterprise operational resilience in line with National Risk Council expectations. In parallel, he has overseen all resilience testing and contributed at the highest levels as a member of senior management, internal control, and SAMA BCM committees.

Seismic Shifts

Having worked with several of the region’s most prominent banks, he has observed a clear evolution in how the GCC financial sector approaches business continuity, disaster recovery, and operational resilience. Over the past decade, resilience has shifted from being largely compliance-driven, focused on meeting regulatory checklists, to becoming a strategic priority actively sponsored by boards and executive committees to protect reputation, customer trust, and long-term competitiveness.

He has seen resilience expand from an IT-centric responsibility to an enterprise-wide discipline. Risk, operations, cybersecurity, HR, facilities, and business units now share accountability, reflecting a deeper understanding that operational resilience depends on the integration of people, processes, technology, and third-party dependencies. This shift has been reinforced by significantly stronger regulatory expectations, particularly from central banks in Saudi Arabia and across the GCC, with frameworks increasingly aligned to international standards such as ISO 22301 and broader operational and cyber resilience guidance.

He adds, “This raised the bar for scenario testing, impact analysis, third-party risk management, and crisis management maturity.”

Another major change has been the sector’s investment in real-time monitoring and automation. Banks now expect continuous visibility through automated failover, disaster recovery orchestration, real-time service monitoring, cyber threat intelligence, and predictive risk analytics, marking a move away from periodic testing toward continuous readiness. At the same time, resilience scenarios have expanded well beyond traditional physical incidents and system outages to include ransomware, cloud service failures, geopolitical disruptions, supply-chain risks, and regional infrastructure dependencies.

Testing practices have also become far more rigorous and realistic. Cross-functional crisis simulations, unannounced failovers, and end-to-end service resilience exercises often involving regulators and third parties are now standard. Underpinning all of this is a cultural shift, where resilience is increasingly viewed as a shared organizational mindset. Through awareness programs, targeted training, and improved crisis communication, employees at all levels better understand their role in maintaining continuity across both physical and digital banking services.

Trusted Alignment

In navigating business continuity discussions involving senior stakeholders, regulators, and audit committees, Waleed builds trust by anchoring conversations in transparency, evidence, and a shared understanding of risk, disruption, and organizational vulnerability.

He asserts, “My goal is to align everyone around a shared resilience vision—grounded in facts, collaboration, and pragmatic decision-making.”

Furthermore, he shares aspects that he aligns seamlessly. Those are:

• Technical risks are consistently translated into business language, focusing on financial impact, customer outcomes, regulatory exposure, and reputational risk, positioning resilience investments as business enablers rather than compliance costs.

• Scenario-based narratives play a key role in alignment, grounding abstract risks in realistic situations such as payment system outages, data center failovers, or cyber incidents that resonate with executive decision-makers.
• Early and proactive engagement with regulators and audit teams helps align expectations, with clear roadmaps, risk acceptance thresholds, and open solicitation of feedback before issues escalate.
• Cross-functional coalitions further strengthen alignment, bringing together business, IT, cybersecurity, operations, and compliance leaders to co-own resilience decisions through structured forums and workshops.
• Consistent, predictable communication through regular updates, testing outcomes, readiness metrics, and remediation progress reinforces confidence and avoids surprises.
• Waleed maintains a calm, balanced tone, presenting realistic options and trade-offs between cost, risk, and regulatory expectations rather than adopting an alarmist stance.
• Trust is ultimately reinforced through execution, demonstrated by successful disaster recovery tests, effective continuity exercises, and sustained improvement in system resilience.
• By positioning himself as a strategic advisor who brings solutions alongside risks, he enables leaders to make informed, defensible decisions that strengthen continuity, customer trust, and regulatory confidence.

Experience Inherits Sanity

Having played a central role in establishing enterprise-wide BCM, DR, and crisis management frameworks across major banks, he draws a clear distinction between merely compliant programs and those that are truly mature. In his view, compliance focuses on meeting regulatory requirements through documentation, while maturity is defined by real operational capability, integration, and continuous validation embedded into day-to-day operations.

A mature continuity program moves beyond policies, plans, and annual reviews to deliver proven readiness through tested end-to-end failover, validated recovery objectives, real-time situational awareness, and teams trained to respond effectively under pressure. Unlike compliance-driven efforts that exist in silos, mature programs operate as an integrated ecosystem, aligning BCM, disaster recovery, cyber incident response, crisis management, third-party risk, and operational risk into a single resilience discipline.

Waleed also emphasizes that maturity is reflected in how resilience supports business strategy. Rather than being treated as a regulatory obligation or cost center, continuity is aligned with digital transformation, cloud adoption, and customer experience goals, positioning resilience as a competitive advantage. Testing practices further distinguish maturity, with realistic, sometimes unannounced exercises, full workload failovers, and scenario testing that spans cyber, operational, and physical disruptions.

Ultimately, mature programs shift the focus from institutional survival to customer trust and service continuity. They anticipate risk through forward-looking analysis, identify emerging vulnerabilities early, and build mitigation strategies before disruptions occur, demonstrating resilience as an active, strategic capability rather than a reactive response to audits.

Systemic Resilience Insights

Through his involvement in national resilience initiatives, including support for the UAE NCEMA standards and the Saudi National Risk Council Framework, he gained a broader perspective on how organizational resilience connects to national preparedness.

• Operating at both levels reinforced that resilience is a system-wide capability, not a siloed function. While organizations can optimize BCM, DR, and crisis management internally, national frameworks reveal how failures in telecom, cloud services, payments, or emergency response can quickly cascade across sectors.
• He observed that effective policy must balance rigor with practical adoption. Strong national standards establish a clear baseline while allowing flexibility for sector-specific needs and organizational maturity, providing direction rather than rigid checklists.
• A key insight was that leadership maturity matters more than documentation. National resilience depends less on the framework itself and more on whether institutional leaders treat resilience as a strategic asset rather than a compliance obligation.
• Real-world crises highlighted that behavior is shaped by culture before procedure. Communication styles, empowerment, and escalation norms often determine outcomes more than written plans, making cultural alignment essential for resilience frameworks to work in practice.
• His experience also underscored the importance of public–private collaboration. National resilience is sustained when banks, telecoms, energy providers, and government entities operate as partners through shared exercises, common language, and transparent information flow.
• Working at the national level forced a longer-term view of risk, shifting focus toward systemic threats, geopolitical change, climate scenarios, and cyber-physical convergence, strengthening foresight over reactive planning.
• Finally, Waleed recognized that standards alone do not create resilience. Capability building through training, certification, and professional development and aligning organizational continuity strategies with national priorities ultimately determines societal readiness and crisis interoperability.

Resilience Evolution

As Chairman of DRI GCC and a certified instructor and auditor, he envisions the region moving decisively from resilience as a compliance exercise to resilience as a performance expectation aligned with global best practice. Regional standards are expected to mature through stronger alignment with international frameworks such as ISO 22301, while being adapted to local regulatory, cultural, and risk contexts. Programs will increasingly be assessed on effectiveness and outcomes, not documentation alone. Here is how he described it further:

• Professional competencies will become more specialized and multidimensional, reflecting the convergence of business continuity, cyber resilience, crisis management, third-party risk, and enterprise resilience. This evolution will raise the baseline for senior resilience roles and create clearer career pathways.
• Awareness across the GCC is shifting from tactical preparedness to strategic risk leadership. Boards, executives, regulators, and audit functions are increasingly treating BCM and DR as core elements of enterprise risk strategy rather than supporting functions.
• Regional forums, conferences, and institutional engagement are accelerating this shift by elevating discussions around emerging risks, AI, smart technologies, and proactive resilience planning.
• Waleed also anticipates the emergence of stronger regional resilience ecosystems, with deeper public-private collaboration across critical sectors such as finance, energy, healthcare, and digital infrastructure.
• This convergence will drive shared exercises, harmonized standards tailored to GCC risk profiles, and closer alignment with national resilience and risk council requirements.
• Finally, education and certification will continue to evolve toward strategic value, emphasizing leadership, governance, risk foresight, and measurable resilience outcomes, reinforcing resilience as a core organizational capability rather than a compliance checkbox.

Readiness Gaps

Based on extensive experience conducting BIAs, GAP assessments, and crisis management planning, Waleed consistently observes that organizations struggle less with the absence of frameworks and more with misplaced confidence in their readiness. Resilience is often treated as a compliance requirement rather than an operational capability, allowing critical gaps to remain hidden until real disruption occurs.

He adds, “Leaders can address these issues by deliberately shifting focus from documentation to decision-making, testing, and accountability.”

• Documentation mistaken for preparedness – Move beyond plan completion metrics toward operational readiness, realistic exercises, and active leadership participation.
• Static BIAs that quickly become outdated – Treat the BIA as a living management tool tied to business change, technology evolution, and executive validation.
• Unrealistic RTOs and RPOs – Enforce clear cost–risk–recoverability trade-offs and require formal risk acceptance when targets are not achievable.
• Assuming IT recovery equals business recovery – Focus on end-to-end critical services, including people, data integrity, manual workarounds, and third-party dependencies.
• Overreliance on crisis manuals – Design crisis frameworks around decision authority, escalation triggers, and leadership behavior, reinforced through simulations.
• Underestimating third-party and concentration risk – Embed resilience into vendor governance and include key suppliers in testing and exercises.
• Ownership without authority – Assign accountability to senior leaders with real decision rights, resources, and performance objectives linked to resilience outcomes.

Human-Centered Resilience

Having led the implementation of large recovery sites supporting up to 400 employees he approaches crisis planning by balancing technical robustness with human-centered considerations. He recognizes that while technology enables recovery, people sustain it under pressure, making usability, endurance, and decision support critical in high-stress environments.

• Design for people before systems – Prioritize ergonomics, lighting, air quality, rest areas, and basic welfare needs so teams can operate effectively for extended periods.
• Simplify technology for crisis use – Reduce tool complexity, pre-configure access, and rely on a single source of truth to limit cognitive overload.
• Prioritize role clarity over procedural detail – Clearly define decision authority, escalation paths, and deputies to maintain momentum if key individuals are unavailable.
• Plan for endurance, not just activation – Build staffing rotations, structured handovers, and redundancy to prevent fatigue and single-point dependency.
• Train for behavior under stress – Use realistic simulations to test leadership judgment, communication, and coordination, not only technical recovery steps.
• Embed well-being into crisis operations – Foster a speak-up culture, structured briefings and debriefings, and calm leadership to protect psychological safety and decision quality.

Contextual Guidance

As Founder and CEO of Continuity Consultancy, Waleed approaches advising organizations with a strong appreciation for where they are in their resilience journey. He understands that organizations just beginning their BCM or DR efforts often need reassurance and clarity, while those with established frameworks need to be thoughtfully challenged. While the underlying principles remain consistent, practicality, realism, and clear leadership ownership set the tone, pace, and focus change based on the organization’s maturity.

For organizations at the start of their business continuity or disaster recovery journey, Waleed focuses on building confidence before complexity. He helps leaders make sense of BCM and DR by translating standards and regulatory expectations into straightforward business language that connects directly to protecting customers and critical services. Rather than overwhelming teams with exhaustive frameworks, he encourages prioritization, focusing first on the risks and services that truly matter. Governance and accountability are established early, recovery objectives are set realistically, and early, practical actions are used to build trust and momentum. The aim is simple: move the organization from awareness to a credible, workable level of readiness.

For organizations with long-standing frameworks in place, he shifts the conversation. Here, the work is less about structure and more about how the organization actually performs under pressure. He challenges assumptions that may have gone unquestioned for years, tests whether recovery strategies still reflect today’s operating reality, and looks beyond documentation to how decisions are made in real situations. By integrating siloed resilience functions and introducing more realistic, demanding simulations, he helps leadership see where true strengths and weaknesses lie. Accountability is elevated to the executive level, with clear ownership of risk and outcomes.

He asserts, “The Objective is to move the organization from compliance and structure to adaptive, demonstrable resilience.”

The Future

Looking ahead, he believes the future of business continuity, disaster recovery, and crisis management in the GCC will be shaped less by individual threats and more by how risk itself is changing. As the region becomes more digital, interconnected, and strategically important, disruptions are likely to be broader, faster-moving, and more interconnected than in the past. In this environment, organizations that continue to treat BCM as a compliance exercise will struggle, while those that invest early in adaptive, people-driven resilience aligned with national frameworks and ecosystem realities will be far better positioned.

From his experience, cyber incidents will no longer be isolated technology events. As systems, platforms, and services become tightly interwoven, a single cyber issue can quickly escalate into enterprise-wide or even national disruption. This means organizations must move beyond traditional cyber response plans and focus on how critical services can continue and recover when digital foundations are compromised. He also sees a growing risk in the concentration of cloud and third-party providers. While these platforms enable speed and scale, heavy dependence on a small number of global providers introduces shared vulnerabilities, making it essential for organizations to think in terms of ecosystem resilience rather than simple vendor assurance.

From his experience, cyber incidents will no longer be isolated technology events. As systems, platforms, and services become tightly interwoven, a single cyber issue can quickly escalate into enterprise-wide or even national disruption.

Waleed also notes a clear shift at the government level. Across the GCC, resilience is increasingly viewed as a national priority, with higher expectations placed on boards and senior leaders. Organizations are no longer seen as operating in isolation; their ability to withstand disruption directly affects economic stability and public confidence. At the same time, climate and environmental pressures, particularly extreme heat, are likely to drive longer and more complex disruptions that test both infrastructure and human endurance.

In his view, the next decade will not reward organizations with the most polished documentation. It will favor those who can adapt in real time, where leadership, technology, and partners work seamlessly together under prolonged uncertainty.

Lastly, he adds, “Resilience in the GCC will increasingly be measured by how well leaders, systems, and partners function together under sustained uncertainty.”

The luxury hotel business is changing in meaningful ways, driven by how travelers want to feel, not just where they want to stay. Leaders across the industry are rethinking service by blending thoughtful innovation with genuine care, personal touches, and smarter ways of operating that make every experience feel more intuitive. Speaking of it, we cannot miss out on a name which is Ali Can Demirok, Director of Sales and Marketing, One&Only Portonovi, Montenegro. Visionary leaders are moving beyond traditional notions of luxury, focusing instead on creating memorable, emotionally rich stays. In the luxury hotel space, this shift is especially visible. By embracing technology that enhances comfort, prioritizing sustainability, and empowering their teams to deliver heartfelt service, they are redefining what exceptional hospitality truly means.

The Luxury Journey

Ali’s career spans some of the world’s most iconic luxury brands, including One&Only, The Ritz-Carlton, Park Hyatt, and The Luxury Collection, across Europe, the Middle East, and beyond. He views his journey not as a straight path of titles, but as an ongoing process of understanding luxury in practice. Each brand and destination offered distinct lessons, shaping his perspective on guests, value, and leadership.

Early in his career, Ali worked in environments with uncompromising standards, which instilled a deep respect for brand integrity. He learned that luxury is defined not by discounts, slogans, or design alone, but by consistency, emotional intelligence, and discipline. As he progressed into senior commercial roles, he came to see that protecting a brand is inseparable from safeguarding its long-term commercial health.

Several milestones stand out. Leading commercial repositioning projects in competitive markets taught him to focus on sustainable demand creation over short-term performance.

Several milestones stand out. Leading commercial repositioning projects in competitive markets taught him to focus on sustainable demand creation over short-term performance. Participating in hotel openings and post-opening stabilization reinforced patience and humility, showing that brand equity is built day by day. Managing properties with diverse demand from ultra-high-end leisure to diplomatic and protocol business sharpened his ability to balance exclusivity with scale.

Working across Europe and the Middle East exposed him to varying leadership styles, guest expectations, and economic cycles. These experiences taught him adaptability without compromising the ability to respect local realities while maintaining global brand values, a balance central to his evolution as a commercial leader.

Empowered Leadership

Ali is widely recognized as a mentor and team builder whose leadership approach is grounded in trust, accountability, and continuous development. He prioritizes hiring for attitude and long-term potential, believing skills can be built while mindset defines performance. By investing in coaching and creating clarity around expectations, he empowers teams to take ownership and perform with confidence. In high-pressure environments, he focuses on building resilience by fostering a culture where people feel valued, supported, and recognized for their contributions.

Strategic Luxury

As Director of Sales & Marketing at One&Only Portonovi in Montenegro, his commercial priorities are centered on revenue quality rather than revenue volume. In today’s highly competitive luxury market, he believes topline growth alone is insufficient; what truly matters is understanding who the guests are, why they choose the resort, and whether their experience strengthens the brand’s long-term desirability.

He positions One&Only Portonovi as a distinctly differentiated luxury destination, one that does not compete on volume or follow short-term trends. His focus is on expressing the One&Only philosophy authentically within the unique context of Montenegro and the Adriatic, an emerging destination still shaping its place in the global luxury landscape. This requires a disciplined, confident approach to brand expression, grounded in clarity rather than compromise.

He says, “From a commercial standpoint, aligning brand positioning with performance means ensuring that pricing reflects experiential value, not market pressure.”

He places strong emphasis on rate integrity, particularly during softer demand periods, recognizing that discounting erodes brand perception and guest trust far beyond its immediate financial impact. The commercial strategy prioritizes attracting guests who genuinely value privacy, space, cultural depth, and refined experiences, rather than transactional luxury.

Central to this approach is close alignment between sales, marketing, and revenue management. Ali ensures that brand storytelling is supported by intelligent distribution and that marketing campaigns are reinforced by yield decisions. When these functions operate cohesively, luxury remains consistent and credible, resulting not only in stronger financial outcomes but also in a more compelling and enduring brand presence.

Core Fundamentals

Ali’s consistent success in delivering strong ADR and RevPAR growth across diverse destinations is guided by a disciplined yet deeply human approach to yield management and revenue optimization. In luxury hospitality, he views yield management as far more than rate movement or short-term reactions to market shifts; it begins with a nuanced understanding of demand, including the emotional and behavioral factors that influence why guests choose to book.

A core principle that defines his approach is rate integrity. Protecting ADR remains non-negotiable, even during challenging market conditions. In softer periods, the pressure to drive demand through pricing can be intense, but he recognizes that in the luxury segment, perceived value is delicate. Once that perception is diluted, rebuilding trust and brand strength takes far longer than any short-term revenue uplift can justify.

Another guiding principle is segmentation clarity. He is clear that not all demand carries the same long-term value, and not every segment should be approached with identical pricing or distribution strategies. By identifying segments that contribute through loyalty, advocacy, or seasonal balance, he is able to make more thoughtful yield decisions. Channel mix also plays a critical role, as the source of demand is just as important as the rate it delivers.

In emerging markets, yield management often requires an educational mindset. Developing the destination, shaping expectations, and helping partners and guests understand the true value of the offering becomes part of the strategy. In mature markets, the focus shifts toward compression, demand displacement, and tactical flexibility.

Ultimately, he believes revenue optimization is not about chasing short-lived peaks, but about building a stable, sustainable performance curve that protects the brand over time.

Customized Market Strategy

Having led commercial functions across cities such as Vienna, Istanbul, Budapest, Muscat, and Montenegro, Ali approaches sales and marketing adaptation with a simple starting point: listening. He believes every market has its own rhythm, and understanding it begins by listening closely to local teams, partners, guests, and the wider socio-economic environment. In his view, assumptions are the greatest risk in international leadership, while curiosity remains its strongest asset.

He recognizes that cultural context shapes everything from how luxury is defined to how relationships are formed. In some markets, trust is built through long-term partnerships and personal presence; in others, through data-driven decisions, efficiency, and consistency. By respecting these differences, sales and marketing strategies feel authentic and grounded, rather than externally imposed.

Economic conditions further influence how markets respond to global shifts, requiring flexibility in messaging, pacing, and segmentation. While these elements may adapt, Ali is firm on one principle: brand standards must remain intact. He believes global brands should never dilute their core identity in the name of localization. Instead, thoughtful localization should enhance relevance while preserving the brand’s essence.

Central to this approach is empowering local teams. He values their insights as irreplaceable, often capturing nuances no report or dashboard can reflect. His role is to provide structure, clarity, and strategic direction, while ensuring that local expertise has a meaningful impact on execution.

Striking the Right Balance

Ali’s experience across transient, leisure, MICE, catering, and high-profile protocol segments, including royal families, has shaped a disciplined approach to balancing exclusivity, personalization, and profitability. He views each demand stream as having its own value proposition, where success depends not only on revenue potential but also on how each segment influences brand perception and operational flow.

He adds, “High-profile and protocol business demands absolute discretion, flawless execution, and deep personalization.”

While profitability in these segments may not always be immediate or easily quantified, their reputational impact can be substantial and long-lasting. By contrast, MICE and catering require a different lens, one centered on efficiency, scale, and structured pricing to ensure margins remain protected without compromising service quality.

Across all segments, Ali defines clear, non-negotiable brand standards while allowing flexibility in how experiences are delivered. Personalization, in his view, should elevate perceived value rather than dilute it. Through careful prioritization, he ensures that each segment contributes meaningfully financially, reputationally, or both to a balanced and sustainable commercial ecosystem.

Integrated Leadership

As EAM Commercial and Hotel Manager at Matild Palace, Ali’s dual responsibility fundamentally reshaped his approach to leadership and decision-making. Holding both roles reinforced a simple but powerful reality: commercial strategies are only as effective as their operational feasibility. Decisions around pricing, segmentation, and volume were no longer abstract exercises; they had immediate and visible effects on service quality, team morale, and the guest experience.

This experience strengthened his conviction that sustainable performance is achieved only when operational excellence and commercial objectives are fully aligned. Rather than viewing them as competing priorities, he came to see them as shared goals that must move in step to deliver consistent results for both the business and its people.

Aligned Forecasting

Ali approaches forecasting as much a people-driven process as a numerical one, recognizing that accuracy, agility, and stakeholder alignment depend on clear communication as much as robust data. He relies on structured methodologies that blend historical performance, real-time market intelligence, and forward-looking indicators, using scenario planning to remain responsive as conditions evolve while maintaining confidence in the numbers.

He asserts, “I focus on explaining assumptions, risks, and strategic implications – not just presenting figures.”

Equally important to him is transparency. By doing so, he ensures ownership and leadership teams remain aligned, informed, and able to make timely, well-grounded decisions.

An Insightful Story

Market expansion and penetration have been defining elements of Ali’s career, particularly in identifying untapped market opportunities that align naturally with a property’s positioning. Across several destinations, he recognized underdeveloped long-haul leisure and lifestyle-driven markets that closely matched the experiential promise of the product. Rather than pursuing volume, the focus was on attracting the right guests with a genuine affinity for the brand.

By refining distribution strategies, deepening relationships with luxury travel advisors, and shaping messaging specifically for these audiences, Ali helped unlock meaningful ADR growth while improving seasonality balance. The approach was thoughtful and deliberate, centered on long-term value rather than short-term demand capture.

He adds, “These initiatives reduced reliance on traditional feeder markets and created more resilient demand structures.”

Tech-aligned Emotion

In Ali’s view, the role of a Director of Sales & Marketing in luxury hospitality has evolved significantly over the past decade. Where success was once driven largely by personal relationships and instinct, today it requires a far more balanced and multidimensional approach. Relationships still matter deeply, but they are now reinforced by data, technology, and long-term strategic thinking.

Modern commercial leadership calls for the ability to interpret analytics, navigate increasingly complex distribution channels, and turn guest insights into clear, actionable strategies.

Ali asserts, “Digital channels, CRM systems, and experience analytics have reshaped how we understand and engage with guests.”

At the same time, he emphasizes that technology must never overshadow emotion in luxury hospitality. The true differentiator lies in blending analytical precision with storytelling, empathy, and genuine human connection, ensuring that data informs decisions without diluting the soul of the guest experience.

Experience Molds

Ali believes the operations he tackled taught him empathy, which included understanding service flow, guest emotions, and the realities teams face daily. It acted as a foundation that ensured commercial strategies remain grounded, realistic, and guest-centric.

Furthermore, about nurturing cross-functional alignment, he highlights shared objectives, regular communication, and transparency as key.

He asserts, “When teams understand how their roles connect to guest satisfaction and commercial success, alignment becomes natural rather than forced.”

Forecasting the Future

In the luxury hospitality sector, the luxury aspect will become more values-driven and more emotionally intelligent, according to Ali. He also highlights aspects like personalisation through data, the growing influence of luxury travel advisors, experiential pricing, sustainability, and stronger direct-to-consumer relationships, which will define the future, according to him.

He adds, “Professionally, I aim to continue shaping transformative commercial strategies within leading luxury brands while mentoring future leaders.”

He remains committed to learning, adaptability, and balance. His ultimate goal is to contribute to a more integrated, thoughtful, and sustainable future for luxury hospitality.

Digital trust needs a redefinition for sure, especially in today’s times. As we enter 2026, we are witnessing cybersecurity leaders who have disruptive solutions that act as a shield for a person’s or organization’s crucial data. No longer confined to the back office, these leaders are now at the forefront of strategic decision-making, ensuring that organizations remain secure, compliant, and resilient in an increasingly complex cyber landscape. Speaking of such business leaders, we cannot miss out on a name, Nageshwaran C., CISO & Cyber Resilience Leader, at TVS Motor Group. His role goes beyond technology; it is about safeguarding reputation, continuity, and customer confidence.

Headship Ideology

With more than two decades spanning enterprise cybersecurity, operational technology, and large-scale IT infrastructure, his journey reflects how defining experiences steadily shape a modern CISO’s leadership approach. His perspective has been forged not in isolation, but at the intersection of technology, business continuity, and people, where security decisions have real-world consequences.

Early in his career, his deep involvement in OT security within manufacturing environments became a turning point. Working with legacy, real-time systems where downtime was simply not an option, he learned the critical importance of managing east–west traffic and limiting lateral movement without disrupting operations. This phase influenced his adoption of a Zero Trust mindset, one rooted in visibility, segmentation, and control, but always balanced with operational realities. For him, resilience was never theoretical; it was about keeping production lines running while staying secure.

As his responsibilities expanded to enterprise-scale IT environments, he led security programs across complex global estates. He played a key role in orchestrating XDR platforms, strengthening endpoint protection through integrated DLP and proxy controls, and simplifying deeply technical cyber risks for board-level conversations. In doing so, compliance gradually shifted from being a checklist exercise to a strategic driver of trust, credibility, and business growth.

He shares, “These experiences have shaped my leadership style, balancing technical rigor with emotional intelligence.”

Whether steering teams through high-pressure incidents or championing AI-driven security capabilities, he focuses on empowering people and enabling innovation. For Nageshwaran, cybersecurity is not a barrier, but a catalyst, especially in fast-moving, non-IT-led sectors such as manufacturing, healthcare, and product-driven organizations.

Striking the Right Technical Balance

Having led cybersecurity for some of India’s most complex manufacturing and mobility ecosystems, Nageshwaran’s work sits at the delicate intersection of operational continuity and digital agility. The question of how to balance the unique demands of OT security with fast-evolving risks across cloud, applications, and enterprise IT is not theoretical for him; it is a daily leadership reality.

Across healthcare, manufacturing, and mobility environments, he approaches this challenge through a unified, XDR-led security framework that brings consistency to converged IT–OT landscapes. The objective is clear: enforce Zero Trust without compromising the real-time reliability that OT environments demand. In OT-heavy manufacturing setups, uninterrupted operations remain non-negotiable. His focus has been on carefully segmenting east–west traffic within legacy PLC and SCADA networks using air-gapped gateways, protocol proxies, and virtual patching, thereby protecting vulnerable systems while minimizing disruption to production. This pragmatic strategy acknowledges the realities of aging infrastructure prevalent in Indian factories, aligns with IEC 62443 requirements, and addresses the rising ransomware threats targeting the manufacturing sector.

On the IT and cloud side, where threat vectors evolve at a rapid pace, Nageshwaran strengthens resilience through endpoint-centric DLP, secure web and application proxies, and behavioral analytics embedded within the XDR platform.

He asserts, “This enables early detection of anomalies arising from IT-OT convergence, one of the most significant risk vectors in India’s industrial landscape.”

In mobility environments, including connected fleets, the emphasis shifts to embedding endpoint security into core operations, ensuring inspection and policy enforcement happen seamlessly, without latency or operational impact.

At the heart of his leadership philosophy lies risk-based prioritization, aligning OT uptime metrics with IT scalability and broader business growth goals. By leveraging AI-driven threat hunting, targeted vulnerability management, and practical automation, he builds security programs that factor in talent constraints and supply-chain exposure, while still enabling secure, scalable innovation across India’s healthcare, manufacturing, and mobility ecosystems.

Creative Engineering

Having designed and implemented enterprise-wide security architectures across AWS, Azure, GCP, and OCI, he has learned that building scalable and resilient cloud security frameworks demands a fundamental shift in thinking. When organizations ask what architectural priorities truly matter in a multi-cloud world, his answer centers on consistency. The real challenge is not capability, but maintaining a unified security posture across platforms that differ in tools, terminology, and APIs. To scale securely, cloud silos must be dismantled in favor of a cloud-agnostic control framework applied uniformly across environments.

At the core of this approach is identity-led security backed by automation.

He shares, “With the traditional perimeter dissolved, identity becomes the primary control plane, enforced through centralized authentication, federated access, and just-in-time privilege management.”

Security guardrails are embedded directly into infrastructure-as-code pipelines, ensuring protection is enforced at deployment, not retrofitted later. A centralized cloud security posture management layer then provides a single, authoritative view of risk, compliance, and asset visibility across all cloud platforms.

Resilience is achieved through zero-trust networking and robust data protection. Microsegmentation and private connectivity reduce lateral movement, while encryption, customer-managed keys, and cross-cloud backups ensure data remains secure and available even during large-scale provider disruptions, supporting business agility without compromising risk discipline.

Strategic Shifts

The question of how to secure critical manufacturing operations while preserving operational continuity has become central to his leadership narrative. In industrial environments, he recognizes that cybersecurity cannot be driven by traditional IT priorities alone. Availability and safety are non-negotiable, and every control must be designed to protect production without introducing disruption.

His approach is rooted in aligning cybersecurity tightly with operational requirements. The starting point is architectural isolation combined with deep visibility. By applying frameworks such as the Purdue Enterprise Reference Architecture, IT and OT networks are clearly segmented, industrial DMZs are enforced, and production lines are microsegmented to contain threats. Passive monitoring and behavioral baselining are used to detect anomalies early, offering visibility without impacting fragile industrial assets.

Vulnerability management and remote access are shaped around on-ground realities. Legacy systems that cannot be patched are safeguarded through virtual patching, while updates are scheduled strictly during planned maintenance windows. Remote access for vendors and engineers follows zero-trust principles, with just-in-time, role-based permissions and protocol isolation. Together, these measures ensure secure, resilient manufacturing operations while maintaining uninterrupted business continuity.

Compliance as Advantage

With extensive exposure to global frameworks such as ISO 27001, NIST CSF, GDPR, CIS Controls, and IEC 62443, Nageshwaran’s perspective on compliance goes well beyond the question of audits and certifications. When enterprises ask how compliance can be elevated into a competitive advantage rather than remaining a checklist exercise, his answer lies in intent and integration. Compliance delivers real value when it is embedded into strategic decision-making and day-to-day operations, guiding risk-aware choices, reinforcing customer trust, and enabling innovation with confidence.

In his experience, the real shift happens when controls are aligned with business priorities. Instead of implementing requirements in isolation, compliance obligations are mapped directly to critical assets, core processes, and customer expectations. GDPR, for instance, is not treated merely as a regulatory mandate, but as an opportunity to demonstrate respect for customer data and an assurance that can clearly differentiate an organization in the market. In the same vein, IEC 62443 is applied to design resilient OT environments that reduce downtime and operational risk, enabling faster and safer production outcomes.

Compliance truly matures when it is operationalized. Continuous monitoring, automated reporting, and metrics-driven governance turn static controls into living programs. When leadership teams clearly see how compliance protects revenue, reduces risk, and strengthens brand credibility, it naturally evolves into a strategic enabler of measurable business value.

Secure Transformation

His approach answers a critical question many organizations face today: how can security evolve seamlessly alongside rapid digital transformation? For him, the answer lies in integration. Cybersecurity must move in lockstep with transformation initiatives, built into their design and execution rather than added as an afterthought. The objective is to enable innovation confidently, without losing sight of risk or control.

His philosophy is anchored in a clear “security by design” mindset. From day one, controls are embedded into architecture, automation pipelines, and cloud environments. Whether rolling out new virtualization platforms or modernizing endpoints, identity management, network segmentation, and threat detection are treated as core components of deployment, not retrofitted fixes. By standardizing policies, monitoring, and response mechanisms across both legacy and modern systems, friction is reduced for IT teams and end users alike.

Equally vital is continuous alignment through adaptive governance.

He says, “Security must be flexible enough to support rapid adoption of new technologies, whether cloud services, SaaS applications, or IoT devices, while maintaining visibility into risk and compliance posture.”

By combining forward-looking architecture, intelligent automation, and continuous monitoring, Nageshwaran ensures organizations can move fast without compromising security, positioning cybersecurity as an enabler of transformation, not a barrier.

Holistic Approach in Security

His past expertise includes tackling SOC operations, incident response, forensics, and threat intelligence programs. Nageshwaran has seen clearly what separates a cyber-resilient organization from one that is merely “security compliant.” When leaders ask what truly makes the difference, his answer consistently points to mindset, culture, and operational maturity. Compliance may satisfy regulatory expectations and reassure auditors that controls are in place, but resilience determines whether an organization can absorb shocks, respond effectively, and recover with minimal business disruption.

In cyber-resilient organizations, security is woven into everyday business operations rather than treated as an external mandate. These organizations operate with an “assume breach” mindset, investing deliberately in detection, response, and recovery capabilities. Decisions are guided by business impact, critical assets and core processes are prioritized, and risk is actively managed rather than narrowly avoided to meet a prescribed standard.

Culture and shared accountability play an equally defining role. Security is not owned by the SOC alone, but shared across leadership and operational teams. Threat intelligence is actively used, and lessons from incidents are quickly folded back into controls and processes. In essence, resilience is dynamic and proactive, while compliance remains static and reactive. Organizations that build true resilience can sustain trust and continue operations under pressure, while compliance-only organizations often falter the moment real threats exceed baseline requirements.

Dependability with Expertise

Having led multidisciplinary teams across network engineering, server management, and security operations, he believes the qualities that define high-performing cybersecurity teams today go well beyond technology alone. When the question turns to what truly distinguishes such teams, his experience points clearly toward mindset, collaboration, and adaptability.

He shares, “The most effective teams combine deep technical expertise with strong communication skills, allowing them to translate complex risks into actionable guidance for the business.”

High-performing teams operate with shared ownership and accountability. Security is not confined to one function; it is embedded across roles, with every individual understanding how their contribution impacts the wider organization. Teams that invest in cross-training, continuous learning, and practical use of threat intelligence are far better prepared to respond quickly and decisively as threats evolve.

Resilience and agility are the final differentiators. The best teams anticipate incidents, build repeatable response processes, and continuously strengthen defenses based on real-world lessons. In a fast-paced environment, this combination enables teams not just to protect the organization, but to support secure innovation.

Ready with Shields

As organizations embrace digital transformation, the cyber threat landscape continues to evolve rapidly. Among the emerging areas of concern, he hints at those that extend beyond direct organizational control: mobile endpoints, software supply chains, and third-party vendors. Mobile devices increasingly blur the line between personal and corporate networks, while supply chain vulnerabilities can introduce weaknesses long before software reaches production. Third-party dependencies create blind spots that can be exploited, making proactive risk management essential.

Addressing these challenges requires a focus on visibility, governance, and risk-based controls. Vendor management involves rigorous onboarding, continuous monitoring, and clearly defined contractual security obligations. For software supply chains, secure development practices, thorough dependency scanning, and provenance verification help prevent vulnerabilities from entering production.

He shares, “Mobile and endpoint security is reinforced through zero-trust access, device hygiene policies, and behavior-based monitoring that detects anomalies early.”

Integrating these measures with continuous monitoring, automation, and cross-functional collaboration strengthens organizational resilience. This approach reduces exposure to emerging threats while enabling businesses to innovate and grow without compromising security. By embedding security into operations and decision-making, he demonstrates that a robust cyber posture is not just a technical necessity but a strategic enabler for sustainable business growth.

Resourceful Morality

His leadership philosophy has been shaped by a career spanning diverse roles, from technical assistant positions to senior administration and now the helm of cybersecurity as a CISO. Reflecting on the question of which career lessons and turning points most strongly influence his approach today, it becomes clear that his philosophy is grounded in both hands-on technical experience and strategic executive insight.

Early in his journey, he recognized that technical expertise alone is insufficient. Its true value emerges when complex risks can be translated into clear, business-relevant decisions. This realization instilled a focus on bridging technology and strategy, a perspective that continues to inform his approach to organizational security.

A defining moment came while leading cross-functional teams during high-pressure incidents.

He asserts, “I realized that effective leadership isn’t about directing every action; it’s about enabling teams to make confident decisions, fostering accountability, and creating a culture where people feel empowered to act quickly and responsibly.”

Fostering accountability and nurturing a culture where individuals feel enabled to act decisively proved far more impactful than relying on rigid rules or hierarchical structures.

These lessons now guide him in building resilient, high-performing teams that align security initiatives with broader organizational objectives. His approach emphasizes continuous learning, proactive problem-solving, and ensuring that every security decision supports both risk management and sustainable business growth.

Boardroom Cyber Alignment

He approaches boardroom conversations with a clear focus on business relevance. When addressing the question of how to communicate cyber risk, investment needs, and readiness to executive leadership, he emphasizes translating technical threats into tangible business impact. Cybersecurity discussions, in his view, are most effective when framed around financial exposure, operational disruption, and reputational risk rather than technical detail.

By quantifying risk and outlining the value of security investments, he positions cybersecurity as a measurable business priority rather than a cost center. Structured risk models and outcome-driven metrics help leadership understand where investments reduce exposure and strengthen resilience. Scenario-based narratives further bring risks to life, demonstrating potential impacts on revenue, customer trust, and business continuity.

Nageshwaran adds, “Tailoring communication to each stakeholder, CFO, CEO, or COO, ensures that the discussion resonates with their priorities, from financial oversight to strategic growth and operational resilience.”

Clear dashboards, risk heat maps, and readiness indicators offer executives a concise view of current posture and improvement areas. Communication is tailored to stakeholder priorities, aligning financial oversight, strategic growth, and operational stability. Through transparency and regular engagement, he ensures cybersecurity remains aligned with broader business objectives, enabling informed decisions that protect brand value and support sustained growth.

Cyber Leadership

He views the CISO role as entering a decisive new phase. Reflecting on how the position will evolve over the next decade, he believes it will move well beyond technical stewardship to become a core pillar of business leadership. The future CISO will no longer function as a gatekeeper, but as an enterprise risk advisor who translates cyber threats into the language of financial exposure, regulatory resilience, and stakeholder confidence. In an era of accelerated digital transformation, security will serve as a foundation for growth rather than a constraint on innovation.

The rapid maturation of AI and automation is central to this shift. Routine detection, triage, and response will increasingly be handled by autonomous systems, enabling security teams to move away from manual alert management. With AI-driven security operations and integrated visibility across cloud environments, the focus shifts toward strategic risk management, governance, and anticipation of emerging threats. In this context, the CISO’s role expands to include ethical oversight of autonomous technologies and the coordination of hybrid human–AI operating models.

Over time, the CISO emerges as an architect of enterprise resilience. The mandate extends beyond infrastructure to encompass cross-functional governance, data integrity, and the secure adoption of new technologies. By working closely with business leaders on cloud-native scale and automated operations, the CISO ensures cybersecurity is embedded into the organization’s fabric, protecting both innovation velocity and brand trust.

Wisdom Pearls

He often reflects on what guidance truly matters for the next generation of security leaders. When considering the question of how upcoming professionals can strengthen both technical depth and business acumen, his perspective is shaped by the realities of working across vastly different operating environments.

At the foundation, he believes technical mastery remains non-negotiable. A strong understanding of system architecture, threat landscapes, incident response, and emerging technologies such as AI, cloud-native security, and automation builds credibility and enables sound decision-making. However, technical expertise alone is not enough. The real impact of security leadership emerges when complex risks are translated into clear business terms—financial exposure, operational continuity, and brand reputation—allowing executives to take informed, timely decisions.

Equally important is cross-sector exposure and adaptability. Each industry presents distinct challenges: gaming demands real-time threat detection and privacy protection, manufacturing prioritizes operational technology safety, education focuses on data protection and compliance, while mobility introduces risks linked to connected devices and IoT. Navigating these environments fosters a flexible mindset and the ability to transfer best practices across domains while anticipating emerging threats.

Beyond technology, Nageshwaran emphasizes the value of relationships and communication. Security, in his view, is as much about people and process as it is about tools. Building strong partnerships with business leaders, IT teams, and stakeholders ensures security initiatives align with organizational goals. Through mentorship, continuous learning, and a focus on governance and strategy, aspiring leaders can evolve into trusted advisors who protect both the organization and its growth journey.