Fatima Al-Kuwari

Fatima Sultan Rashid Al-Kuwari is Chief Human Resources Officer of Ooredoo Group.

She was the fourth daughter in a family that treated education and public service as obligations. An elder sister became a doctor, two brothers became engineers in the petroleum sector, and a younger sister specialised in petroleum engineering. She chose computer science at Qatar University, supported by a father who gave his children confidence, resolve and the expectation that personal success should also serve the country.

Her father was the first Qatari to specialise in agriculture and ended his public career as Assistant Undersecretary at the Ministry of Industry and Agriculture. During that period, Qatar achieved a distinguished international position in agriculture, joined the Food and Agriculture Organization and underwent significant development. His passion for work and country provided a lasting professional example.

Her mother died when she was eight. Although the loss profoundly affected her, family stories about her mother’s character and influence strengthened the daughter’s determination to succeed. The extended family surrounded the children with care and gave her a stable childhood.

After completing the scientific stream at Amna Bint Wahab School, she studied computer science at Qatar University, then a new and sought-after field. She joined Qtel immediately after graduation in 2006. Further qualifications included an MBA from the University of Liverpool in 2012, a certificate from Qatar Leadership Centre and an Executive Master’s in Leadership from Georgetown University in 2020, supplemented by dozens of courses inside and beyond her technical specialisation.

In 2008, she became Product Manager responsible for launching BlackBerry services in Qatar. A year later, she joined the Virgin Mobile team and helped launch Qtel Virgin Mobile services. In 2012, she moved into public relations as the company’s official spokesperson and first woman to hold that prominent representative role in Qatar. The following year, she joined the team that changed the name and identity from Qtel to Ooredoo.

In 2016, she was appointed to lead marketing across Ooredoo Group’s ten operations in Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Tunisia, Algeria, Palestine, Iraq, Myanmar, the Maldives and Indonesia. She joined the board of Ooredoo Kuwait in 2018 as its first woman member. Returning to Qatar in 2019, she led Personnel Services, an area responsible for more than QAR4 billion in annual revenue.

Her contribution extended beyond the company through lectures and workshops for secondary-school and university students choosing disciplines and careers. She values this voluntary work because she can see its effect on young people’s decisions and understands the importance of visible role models.

The memory of her mother remains one of the strongest personal challenges. More than thirty years after the loss, former pupils, colleagues and friends continued to describe the impact her mother had left, reinforcing the daughter’s determination to build a similarly lasting record.

When she entered Ooredoo’s technical environment in 2006, she was often the only woman and the only Qatari in meetings. Women’s representation subsequently grew, although it remained smaller than men’s both in Qatar and internationally. The experience made her more determined to demonstrate women’s technical ability and encourage their participation.

Frequent travel and demanding responsibilities had to be balanced with raising her only son, Ali. Family support allowed her to sustain both motherhood and professional ambition without treating either as secondary.

Managers and senior colleagues also supported her through difficult stages, sometimes acting as mentors whose guidance resembled that of a father. Their confidence reflected the competence and potential she had demonstrated in successive roles.

Motherhood itself deepened her sense of responsibility and the importance of leaving work that could make her son proud. It also strengthened her commitment to young Qataris as future leaders and to encouraging girls to enter scientific and technical disciplines.