Caroline Kfoury

Caroline Antoine Kfoury is a Senior Human Resources Business Partner in sports management and human resources at Aspire and a trainer and instructor at the Asian Football Confederation Academy.

Born in Beirut in 1974, she was raised in a family of six.

Born in Beirut in 1974, she was raised in a family of six. Her father worked as a correspondent and facilitated transactions, while her mother was active in trade. Her birth coincided with the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War, and the uncertainty surrounding childhood developed independence and perseverance early.

Her mother insisted that difficult circumstances should not interrupt education. That determination remained a source of gratitude and later informed her own conviction that professional development must continue even when work and family place competing demands on time.

Reading began seriously at about ten. Gibran Khalil Gibran, Mikhail Naimy and Taha Hussein opened Arabic literature to her, while books in English and French led towards writers and thinkers including Jean-Paul Sartre.

She studied at Our Lady of Peace School and Girls’ Secondary School in Jdeideh, Lebanon, graduating in 1992. Political science was her first choice, but her father, wary of the country’s political circumstances, directed her elsewhere. She spent two years studying journalism and documentation at the Lebanese University amid continuing instability.

Later study gave her work a broader professional framework. She completed Global Human Resource Management at Franklin University, a sports-management diploma at Bocconi University, the Global Professional in Human Resources qualification and advanced training in curriculum design.

Part-time work accompanied study. In 1997, strong English skills helped her join the Lebanese Olympic Committee, beginning a career in sport that had not been part of her original plan.

What began as clerical work expanded rapidly into sports management. Faced with the need to learn or lose the opportunity, she taught herself the field. Her father’s example as a self-made professional supplied a practical model for persistence.

Over seven years, she worked on tournaments, national teams, sports federations, athletic scholarships, training and translation. The range of responsibilities gave her a detailed understanding of how sporting institutions depend on administration as much as competition.

In 2003, she moved to Qatar while Aspire was still under construction and joined as Executive Secretary to the Director-General. A different culture, dialect and pace of work required adjustment, but the new institution also gave her room to grow.

She later transferred into human resources and pursued the qualifications needed to move from administrative support to specialist practice. Work across Aspire Academy and Aspire Zone, together with support from senior leaders, allowed her to connect people management with the particular demands of sport.

Her contribution included helping shift human resources from a mainly administrative function towards strategic partnership. She developed induction processes, automation and intranet systems, a four-stage programme for new leaders and emergency plans aligned with institutional needs.

That work formed part of the culture recognised when Aspire was named the Best Place to Work in Qatar in 2023. For her, the recognition reflected the combined effort required to make systems useful to employees rather than merely procedural.

Since 2017, she has delivered training at Aspire and has also served as an instructor at the Asian Football Confederation Academy. Teaching allowed her to turn accumulated experience into practical learning for professionals entering human resources and sports management.

Change management remained one of the most demanding parts of the role. She responded by treating training as a long-term, measurable process, with clear outcomes rather than isolated courses whose effect could not be demonstrated.

During Covid-19, she spent a year and a half on the emergency team, coordinating with the Ministry of Public Health, students and families. The work covered infections, safety standards, vaccination and the anxieties of parents, requiring both precise procedures and sustained human reassurance.