Who’s Who: Dr. Ali bin Mohammed Al-Suwat, mayor of the Qassim region

Dr. Ali bin Mohammed Al-Suwat. (Supplied)

Dr. Ali bin Mohammed Al-Suwat was recently appointed mayor of the Qassim region following a royal decree.
Prior to his new position, Al-Suwat served as the mayor of the Baha region for nearly four years beginning in 2017.
A few days before his recent appointment, the municipality of Baha was ranked fourth among 17 local municipalities on the digital transformation index issued by the Kingdom’s Digital Government Authority.
Before his work in Baha, he was head of Abqaiq mayoralty in the Eastern Province. He also served as the director of the urban planning department at the Eastern Province municipality, where he previously was the director of the project coordination department.
Al-Suwat, who has many research, scientific papers and studies published in both Arabic and English, was speaker at a number of conferences and meetings on urban and developmental issues. He presented a paper at the roundtable discussion sustainable cities alliance on the sidelines of the third UN-Habitat forum for green development, held in 2019 in Chengdu, China. 
When working for the Eastern Province municipality, he represented the municipality to the World Energy Cities Partnership, which connects leading energy cities on all continents that are committed to fostering the transition to a more sustainable energy future, held in 2012 at the WECP headquarters in Houston, in the US.
A year prior to that, he represented the Eastern Province mayor at the WECP annual meeting, held in Doha, Qatar.
Al-Suwat received a bachelor’s degree in 1995 from King Faisal University’s college of architecture and planning. Four years later, the university’s department of building engineering granted him a master’s in project management. In 2011, he obtained a Ph.D. in sustainable architecture from the college of architecture and planning of King Saud University.