Dr. Sayd Farook leads DinarStandard’s Innovation practice and specializes in future foresight and responsible finance. His core talent lies in conceiving visionary propositions and bringing them to life through solid execution. He enables strategic transformation and innovation initiatives by pooling resources on behalf of government and corporate clients.

Sayd conceived and incubated some of the most exciting government transformation propositions including Area 2071, Dubai 10X, UAE AI Strategy 2031.

Prior to joining DinarStandard, Sayd served as an Advisor to the Executive Office, Vice President, and Prime Minister of the UAE. Prior to that, Sayd oversaw and executed the global Islamic markets strategy at Thomson Reuters for five years.

Sayd is also a founder of Falcon Network, a venture investment network investing in early-stage start-ups across high growth markets. Sayd also founded and is currently Vice Chair Board of Trustees of the Responsible Finance and Investment Foundation. As a personal passion, Sayd focuses on nurturing leaders who have the potential to deliver exponential impact through their influence and resources. Sayd also loves to support (and is currently supporting) several education & refugee initiatives.

Sayd has a Ph.D. at the intersection of Behavioral Economics / Finance and Risk Management / Islamic Banking, a first-class Honors in Business and a Degree in Law (LLB) from the University of Technology Sydney. He has also completed the Regional Entrepreneurship and Acceleration Program (REAP) from MIT.

Relevant Experience:

• Conception, strategy and execution of Dubai 10X, rolled out across 36 government entities leading to more than 50 high impact executed initiatives and programs across Dubai 

• Conception, strategy and execution of Dubai Future Foundation University Entrepreneurship Program (UEP) rolled out across more than a dozen universities in Dubai 

• Conception and strategy for UAE State Minister of AI and UAE Artificial Intelligence Strategy 2031

• Conception, strategy and launch of Area 2071, an innovation ecosystem enabling the fluid interaction of venture capital firms, start-ups, corporations and government innovation entities  

• Conception of Government in 2071 report

• Authoring of multiple reports and analysis for the Arab Strategy Forum

• Conception of Innovation insights for the Executive Office and Dubai 10X

• Conception and co-authoring of State of the Global Islamic Economy Report 

• Conception of multiple indices including Global Islamic Economy Indicator, Islamic Finance Development Indicator and many others