Outstanding Female in Corporate Strategy

1. Brief Description / Background Noura AlShamsi is a seasoned UAE government strategist with nearly two decades of experience driving transformative initiatives in public service. She began her career at Dubai Municipality, where she rapidly rose through the ranks by leading high-impact programs in public health and food safety. In these early roles, Noura pioneered digital and policy innovations – notably launching “Food Watch,” the first digital platform for food safety management in Dubai and implementing healthy nutrition standards in schools and restaurants. She also chaired the annual Dubai International Food Safety Conference, attracting over 3,000 global delegates with more than 60 food safety experts around the world, which showcased Dubai’s advances in food Safety . Through successive leadership positions – from Head of Planning & Development, Head of Permits and Applied Nutrition in Food Safety to Director of Strategy & Corporate Excellence – Noura consistently championed excellence, data-driven decision-making, and inter-departmental collaboration to uplift service quality and safeguard community well-being. In 2023, Noura brought her passion for strategic transformation to Ports, Customs & Free Zone Corporation (PCFC) as Director of Strategy and Corporate governance. Tasked with reinvigorating corporate strategy and governance at PCFC, she immediately set about modernizing the organization. Noura aligned PCFC’s strategy with Dubai’s visionary goals and introduced innovative governance practices. For example, she launched an automated internal excellence awards system – a first-of-its-kind program requiring no manual intervention – to incentivize high performance across the corporation. She also began updating PCFC’s long-term strategic plan and reinforcing a culture of continuous improvement and accountability. Noura’s swift impact laid the groundwork for a rapid transformation of PCFC, setting the stage for the remarkable improvements and accolades the organization would achieve under her guidance in the subsequent two years.