Hamad Ali Al-Mannai serves as the Director of the Office of The Minister of Economy & Commerce. Mr. Al-Mannai is currently a Board Member of Qatar Financial Market Authority, Qatar Development Bank, Qatar National Broadband Network Company, Knowledge Ventures (a subsidiary of Qatar Foundation), and an executive Vice Chairman of Gulf Bridge International. He also chairs the IT Strategy and Implementation Committee of Sidra Medical Research Center, and is the vice chair of the Strategy and Initiatives Committee at the Ministry of Business & Trade. He started his carrier working at the Ministry of Interiors, and advanced to become a Policy and Economics Manager at the Supreme Council of Communications & Information Technology. Hamad played an active role in establishing the Council and started up multiple national projects such as Qcert (Qatar’s national computer emergency and response team), coordination of ICT infrastructure and services of multi-stakeholders program’s on the 2006 Asian Olympics games, and ipark (a free public internet access initiative). In such initiatives, his engagement included the initiation, policy setup, feasibility, and deployment of the programs. Hamad has been noted for his multi-disciplinary skills of which reaping the potential of technologies and its transformational role into enabling the knowledge based society and economy is essential. He previously worked in harmonizing the legal, economical, and technological frameworks in order to achieve ICT projects’ targets. He co-managed the establishment of the Qatari Telecom law, and headed an economic modelling forecast of the Qatari National Telecom sector. He was latter appointed as a Deputy CEO of Meeza (a Qatar Foundation Venture) and was appointed a CEO of Knowledge Ventures. Mr. Al-Mannai has served in many national committees including the National World Trade Organization Committee and the National Engineering Approval Committee.