Majed Alnaji is the director of operations at the Saudi Climbing Federation (SCF), which governs all aspects of rock climbing and mountaineering in Saudi Arabia. Alnaji was appointed to this position in June 2018.
He is a civil engineer by qualification. He attended Northeastern University until 2017 and is an avid researcher.
He is an avid researcher and has worked at the Laboratory for Graphene Research, the Boston University Photonics Center and the Kostas Institute for Homeland Security.
Before joining the SCF, he worked with Careem, the ride-hailing app service, for around one year as a data analytics intern in Alkhobar.
Alnaji is a dedicated climber, who was also part of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Outing Club.
As part of the university club, he organized monthly weekend-long outdoor trips and conducted first-aid courses and provided climbing enthusiasts with the necessary training and handled equipment inventory.
He is a certified urban and wilderness emergency medical technician (EMT-B) and has undergone guide and rescue training.
Recently, the SCF hosted the first Mountainfilm festival in Jeddah as part of its world tour.
Ten short films of various topics including skiing, climbing, nature and running were screened. The documentaries were filmed in great spots for climbing sports around the world in many cities in Spain, France, US, Nepal and Norway.
Alnaji said: “It is really our first big event as a federation as we were founded in January; we started in Asharqiyah and we were in Riyadh last weekend and this is the last show of the tour.”
He added: “We wanted to promote this part of climbing and outer sports in general by opening people’s eyes to possibilities.”
The SCF is working on a number of other initiatives including preparing the first outdoor climbing area “Al-Shafa” outside the city of Taif where 35 climbing tracks have been developed. In addition to that, the “Tanoma’’ area in Al-Abha will be completed for external climbing next week and will be open to receive climbers by next week.