Emerging Stronger: Reflections from the 2026 MEPRA UAE Leadership Majlis

What a room of communications leaders revealed about resilience, and about the kind of leadership the next chapter will demand.

I recently had the privilege of attending the 2026 MEPRA UAE Leadership Majlis at the Saadiyat Rotana in Abu Dhabi. This year’s theme, Emerging Stronger: Shaping What Comes Next, could not have been better timed. The room had just lived through months of regional tension, and the conversation reflected that. What I took away was less about crisis management as a technical discipline and more about leadership, trust and the qualities that hold an organisation together when the ground moves. Below are the reflections that stayed with me, particularly from a senior talent perspective.

Trust Is Becoming Strategic Capital

The opening keynote came from H.E. Hend Al Otaiba, Founder and CEO of HAO Strategies and former UAE Ambassador to France. Her central argument has stayed with me since. Reputation is not built when circumstances are easy. It is revealed when circumstances become difficult.

She described trust as a form of strategic capital. It attracts investment, it speeds up decision making and it strengthens partnerships, and in periods of uncertainty it becomes more valuable still. It is earned slowly, through consistency and through actions that match words. Through the recent escalation, she noted, the UAE weighed every word and held its position while the region grew louder. That discipline is itself a strategy. In a crowded information space, the steady voice is the one people believe.

The point that resonated most was her framing of communications leaders as the guardians of how an institution is understood. As content becomes easier to create and noise becomes harder to cut through, judgement and credibility become the scarce resources. That elevates the communications function well beyond output. It makes reputation an asset that has to be defended, and it puts that responsibility squarely at board level.

What Gets You Through Starts Long Before the Crisis

The Majlis brought together leaders from tourism, automotive, retail and energy, four businesses that could hardly be more different, to talk through the same few months. What struck me was how much their conclusions overlapped.

Gehan Sidky of Ras Al Khaimah Tourism opened with a point that travels well beyond tourism. The relationships, brand affinity and partnerships that carry you through a crisis are the ones built long before it arrives. With international travel stalled, her team turned to the domestic market, and they were careful with their language. The usual staycation pitch of escape and unwind felt wrong while missiles were being intercepted overhead, so the campaign talked about moments instead. Domestic visitors rose 93 percent by May. Her sharper point was that confidence is really a communications problem. There is always a gap between how things are and how they are seen, and the work is to find the widest gap and close it first.

Rasha Ghanem of Ford Middle East and North Africa picked up the same thread from inside the business. When the conflict hit, she moved almost everything from external to internal, stood up an emergency leadership task force running daily check-ins, and put employee safety and mental health ahead of output. On the worst days, a hello with a thumbs up in reply was all she needed. For once the regional team was feeding guidance up to global headquarters rather than waiting for it to come down, because they were the ones on the ground. Communications, as she put it, earned its seat at the table.

Mahmoud Fansa of GE Vernova reached a similar conclusion from critical infrastructure. With several thousand regional employees and operations sitting close to the centre of the threat conversation, he treated internal communications as though it were external, on the assumption that any message could become a screenshot and any screenshot could become a headline.

The Judgement to Know When, and Whether, to Speak

That same caution shaped what GE Vernova said in public, which was very little. Fansa was firm that silence can be a deliberate choice rather than a loss of nerve. In a polarised media environment, declining to engage rumours protected the business, and the messaging that belonged at government level was left to government. A lifestyle brand can afford to lighten the mood. An energy or water provider cannot, because the same gesture reads very differently. The craft, he argued, is saying the right thing on the right platform at the right moment, and being comfortable with quiet the rest of the time.

Benjamin Schroeder of Al-Futtaim Group showed the other half of that equation, which is presence. Responsible for around 40,000 people across 20 countries, his priority was keeping them safe while keeping the shops trading. Leaders were told to be seen, walking the malls rather than retreating to the boardroom. Spreading risk across five divisions meant only one, automotive, took the heaviest blow, and being privately held, with a single shareholder and no quarterly reporting, let decisions be made quickly and in step. He flew to Japan with his CEO to reassure Toyota and keep cars moving, rerouting them through Sri Lanka at three times the cost. And he was candid that the UAE will not simply pick up where it left off. It will be different, and to his mind, stronger.

What This Means for Leadership and Talent in the UAE

As someone embedded in executive search across the region, a few implications stand out for me.

The period tested a specific kind of leader, and it was revealing about who rose to it. The leaders who held up were the ones who could stay calm, communicate with credibility and make quick decisions without losing alignment. It also confirmed that communications and corporate affairs belong in the C-suite, with reputation managed as an asset rather than an afterthought.

The senior roles organisations are now prioritising reflect that shift:

• Chief Communications Officers and Heads of Corporate Affairs with crisis experience
• Internal Communications and Employee Engagement leaders, now treated as strategic rather than supporting
• Regional Directors who can read the UAE context and act with autonomy
• Government Affairs and Public Affairs specialists who understand when to speak and when to hold
• Reputation and Issues leaders who can protect brand and licence to operate under pressure

Demand for this talent will continue to outpace supply, and bilingual, regionally experienced leaders remain in short supply. The premium is on judgement. Knowing what to say, to whom, on which channel, and when silence serves the organisation better than noise.

Final Thoughts

The line that has stayed with me is Hend Al Otaiba’s, that reputation is revealed in difficult times rather than built in easy ones. The same is true of leadership. The organisations that emerged with their standing intact were the ones that had invested in trust during the calm, and that had leaders able to protect it when the pressure came.

For those of us in talent, getting the right communications and corporate affairs leadership in place is central to whether organisations come through the next period of uncertainty stronger. On the evidence of this Majlis, that leadership has rarely mattered more.

Whether you are hiring senior talent or considering your next career move, our team would be delighted to support you.

Alice Weightman is CEO and Head of MENA for Hanson Search Group.

Hanson Search Group is a global talent consultancy providing executive search, recruitment and leadership advisory services. Built on more than twenty years of trusted relationships, we operate as a connected global platform of specialist practices with expert consultants embedded in key markets.