Malika Al-Shraim

Malika Mohammed Al-Shraim is Director of Public Relations and Communications at the Cultural Village Foundation, Katara, and a member of its founding generation.

At seventeen, immediately after secondary school, she joined Qatar Petroleum in 1997.

She was an introverted child whose relationships were limited and whose room became a private world of colour and language. She could spend hours colouring until her fingers hurt, and she developed an equal fascination with English through television and radio. She translated what she heard, broke words into sounds and trained her pronunciation independently before adding formal study at the British Institute.

At seventeen, immediately after secondary school, she joined Qatar Petroleum in 1997. The organisation shaped both her character and her understanding of work. Her energy attracted the confidence of senior staff but also rivalry from some colleagues. To work effectively, she pushed beyond her isolation, learned to understand people and developed the communication skills that would later define her career. Although her title remained clerk in the early years, she acquired discipline, time management and responsibility.

The experience prompted her to return to education. She entered the Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport to study business administration with a concentration in financial management. For four years, she combined a demanding job with accelerated study and summer courses, often under intense pressure.

A transfer to the Contracts Department made that pressure greater. The work involved confidential tenders, sensitive information and large sums, and she was the only Qatari woman in the department. At first, she was given no substantive responsibility. Persistent requests to learn gradually won the support of the department head and the trust of colleagues, who trained her until she could handle difficult assignments and understand details beyond her formal remit.

During those years, she developed a thyroid condition that affected her health and appearance for six years. A doctor advised surgical removal and lifelong medication, but she declined. Illness did not interrupt the degree or the career, and she later moved to the Budgeting Department, adding another dimension to eleven years of experience at Qatar Petroleum.

She graduated in 2004. Recognition and equivalency of the degree required seven months of procedures, after which she received senior status and became Head of Administration and Training in the Drilling Department. She was now managing people who had once supervised her. To make training relevant, she designed programmes around participants’ educational levels and asked to visit operational sites. A field programme took women employees to a major offshore production platform in the North Field and to Halul Island, giving her a broader view of the technical work behind the office.

The next professional chapter began with a telephone call in 2004 from Ahmed Rashid Al-Musnad, who invited her to interview for a new cultural project. She did not pursue the offer at first. In 2007, the team approached her again with a choice between leading public relations and human resources at the Cultural Village Foundation. They believed her abilities were best suited to public relations, and she accepted.

Leaving Qatar Petroleum after eleven years was difficult. Managers tried to persuade her to reconsider, but she chose the uncertainty of a founding organisation. With a team of no more than six, she helped establish laws, job structures, departments and role descriptions, drawing on her earlier administrative experience. She also undertook extensive media and public-relations training so that formal knowledge would match practice.

Creating the institution’s identity required six months of continuous work and nearly 500 proposed logos. After pausing to reconsider the direction, she developed a friend’s initial suggestion into a bilingual mark whose Arabic and English forms expressed communication between East and West. The name and symbol also carried a special association with Qatar’s founder, Sheikh Jassim bin Mohammed bin Thani. The team moved from the project name to the Cultural Village Foundation and prepared the opening programme, events, activities and marketing.

In 2011, the amphitheatre opened with a concert by Vangelis, who presented a work written for the cultural district. About 2,000 guests attended. The occasion marked Katara’s effective public launch and became a major logistical test for the founding team, particularly the public-relations function.

Professional success demanded personal sacrifice. Continuous work reduced the time available for social and family life, yet she found satisfaction in seeing new buildings, successful festivals and visitors’ enjoyment. The deepest personal blow came with her father’s death before he could witness the opening of the amphitheatre. She had to carry that grief while meeting responsibilities that could not be postponed.

Within Katara, she worked to change the idea that public relations consisted only of receiving and bidding farewell to guests. New functions and careful attention to detail helped form a coherent public image for the institution and gave the department a strategic role.

Her appointment to the founding committee of the Qatar International Falcon and Hunting Festival, Marmi, brought an early test from members unfamiliar with her and accustomed to a male field. Work across successive meetings changed that view. After eleven years, the festival had acquired an international reputation, and she remained involved not only administratively but also in field operations.

The Suhail Exhibition, specialising in falconry equipment and hunting weapons, offered a similar demonstration that professional ability—not gender—should determine responsibility. Her work across Qatar Petroleum and Katara was reinforced by qualifications in business administration, financial management and executive management in London. Together, those experiences established a career built on discipline, institutional development and communication.