https://arab.news/gdptd
Nourah Abdullah Alzaid has been the chief of staff to the minister at the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology since August 2020.
Alzaid is an expert in the digital economy and has years of experience in digital transformation, IT, entrepreneurship, and national and sectoral strategies in the US, France, and the Middle East.
In addition to her work as chief of staff, Alzaid works as an active member in several government committees and chairs the council for women in the communications, IT, space and innovation sector with the aim of enabling Saudi women to work in the private sector and raise their participation in the labor market.
Prior to her current role, Alzaid worked as general manager of the secretariat of the National Committee of Digital Transformation from May 2019.
Alzaid obtained a bachelor’s degree in English language and literature at King Saud University in 2010. After her graduation, she joined GE Healthcare, a global medical technology and digital solutions innovator.
Within two years of joining the company, she became a business operations specialist. She also served as business operations leader and in July 2014, she was promoted to commercial operations leader.
In October 2015, Alzaid became manager of GE’s center in Saudi Arabia for global operations. One of her main responsibilities was to improve the productivity of the Saudi team so as to meet the company’s global standards. Eight months later, she became a senior program manager.
In May 2018, she served as government affairs and policy leader for Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, where she worked as a liaison between the company and the two governments.
In October 2018, Alzaid joined Baker Hughes as government affairs and policy director. After eight months, she joined the National Digital Transformation Unit.
She has worked on various transformational initiatives, including working on the first all-female center to conduct administrative services procedures in the Kingdom between Saudi Aramco, General Electric and Tata, which is in line with the Kingdom’s objectives in the areas of localization of industries and the creation of more job opportunities and economic diversification.
Alzaid has also worked on implementing the initiatives of the National Transformation Program in the Kingdom, the National Strategy for Digital Transformation and many other initiatives.
At the end of 2022, she won the Arab Government Excellence Award for the best Arab government employee, which was awarded by the Arab Organization for Administrative Development.
Alzaid also took the Harvard Ministerial Leadership Program, a collaboration between various schools of the university, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.