Microsoft has appointed several new leaders in its Middle East Africa (MEA) headquarters to oversee operations, as the company looks to the cloud opportunity in the region.
Celine Bremaud joined MEA earlier this year as the Vice President of Sales, Marketing and Operations for the region, and has since assembled a team of senior Managing Directors who are poised to lead Microsoft’s business into the era of digital transformation.
Bremaud joined Microsoft eighteen years ago from Compaq, and has since held senior roles across several regions. Most recently, she held a Corporate role as Vice President Small and Midmarket Services & Partner group for EMEA, a role she previously held in MEA. She has also worked in France, running the OEM and retail business. During her tenure, Bremaud has consistently built high performing teams, developed strong ecosystems, drove change and delivered solid growth, positioning her perfectly to support the rapidly growing cloud opportunity in the MEA region.
Celine graduated from the Institut Superieur du Commerce de Paris (France), a Business and Management School where she obtained a Major in International Business and Management.
The MEA team appointed by Bremaud, comprises a mix of Microsoft veterans and top leaders attracted from the industry. Each leader’s remit is to support the nine subsidiaries across the MEA region, to ensure we provide the right level of support to each partner and customer to drive the digital transformation opportunity enabled by cloud technology.
Wael El-Kabbany will be the Managing Director Commercial Enterprise MEA. Wael El-Kabbany joins the team from BT where he served as the VP for Middle East and North Africa. During his eleven-year tenure at BT, El-Kabbany led the establishment of the MEA sales and presales operations, set the strategy to penetrate new markets and grew the business from a handful of global accounts into a flourishing regional hub providing full ICT services to a broad base of customers.
Prior to joining BT, El-Kabbany held senior roles at other leading companies including Intergraph International, Raya Group, Atos Origin Middle East & Africa. He holds a B.Sc. in communication engineering, and developed his postgraduate studies in corporate governance, international trade and financial planning. His deep experience in ICT over the past twenty-five years sees him taking on this key role within Microsoft, which has a core focus on driving cloud adoption within the enterprise space.
Ihab Foudeh – General Manager Public Sector MEA will take on this critically important role to drive digital transformation in our key government verticals including education and healthcare.
Foudeh joined Microsoft fifteen years ago and has held several senior leadership positions in the region, most recently as the head of services for MEA, which saw his team winning several Microsoft awards. During his tenure, he also served as the enterprise and services leads for the Gulf region. He holds degrees in electrical engineering, computer engineering and a Master’s in Business Administration.
Bruno Delamarre: General Manager One Commercial Partner & SMC MEA, a role which is dedicated to advancing Microsoft’s reputation as an innovative partner to small, medium and midmarket businesses in the region, while focusing on building strategic alliances with partners.
With more than 20 years of experience in the IT field, Delamarre will rely on his excellent business leadership and relationships to drive success in his new role. Delamarre joined Microsoft in Gulf in 2011, and has held senior roles as the small business and midmarket solutions and partner lead, and most recently as the enterprise director.
Prior to joining Microsoft, Delamarre held leadership positions at several global tech companies including Orange, Avaya, Tandberg and Vidyo. He holds an engineering degree in Telecommunication and a Masters Degree in Business Management.
Jaime Galviz: Chief Marketing and Operations Officer MEA. A twenty-year long Microsoft employee, Galviz has spent six years in the MEA region, during which time he has created many new programs to accelerate the adoption of cloud skills, establish a strong ecosystem and nurture local talent. Prior to his time in MEA, Galviz spent fourteen years in South America, strengthening Microsoft’s business operations in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela. An industrial engineer trained at the University of Andes, Galviz proved his value early on in his Microsoft career by creating and piloting the Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA) in his native Columbia. This is now the definitive online learning tool for Microsoft worldwide.
Mark Chaban: General Manager, CTO of Specialist Technical Unit MEA. Leading a community of highly skilled architects, solution specialists and technical sellers who are in passionate pursuit of enabling enterprise customers to accelerate their digital transformation journey through four prime solution areas: Modern Workplace, Business Applications, Data & Artificial Intelligence and Apps & Infrastructure leveraging the intelligent cloud platform.
Chaban has over 22 years of industry experience. Most recently with Microsoft, he served as the Senior Director of Education for MEA, a role which saw the region leap ahead in driving digital enablement in the classrooms across K12 schools, universities and research institutes.
Chaban’s team of education industry leaders engaged a community of over 2 million educators and students on the Microsoft learning platform. Under his leadership, Africa and the GCC countries saw the development of education partnerships and the creation of strategic relationships that made quality education more accessible.
Chaban brings diverse value into the MEA Specialist Team, having held previous roles at Microsoft that include Security Architecture, Global Technical Strategist and Cloud & Enterprise Business Group. Prior to joining Microsoft, he served as an Ethical Hacker at IBM Global Services Security & Privacy Division as part US National Team, and he’s also held technical leadership roles at GM/EDS. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan, where he received a Master’s in Software Engineering & Bachelors in Computer Science.
Niamh Spelman: General Manager of Services. Niamh was most recently President of Vodafone Global Enterprise Middle East and Africa, focusing on the company’s largest multinational customers. During her tenure, Vodafone MEA established itself as the fastest growing region, drawing further investment to sustain that growth.
Prior to joining Vodafone, Niamh was Senior Vice President Emerging Markets at Fujitsu, responsible for a diverse region including Russia, CIS, Turkey, Eastern Europe, Middle East, Africa and India. She is a graduate of Trinity College in Dublin
