Tamara Abdel-Jaber is a co-founder and an executive board member at Palma. As Executive Board Member, she is responsible for strategy, corporate governance, performance management and business development. Tamara is a member of the Young Arab Leaders, a pan-Arab organization with the mandate to spread modern leadership values and fostering the development of future Arab leaders. Additionally, she currently serves on the board of the Institute of Management Consultants and Trainers – Jordan and serves for the second term as the board chairperson.

Tamara was recently selected to take part in the 2009 Fortune/ U.S. State Department Global Women Mentoring Partnership where she was mentored by c-level executives at Accenture in New York and Chicago. She participated and spoke at the 2009 Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit in San Diego, USA. She also participated as a member of the Official Middle East delegation to the Global Women’s Forum in Deauville, France in Oct 2009. Tamara was recently selected to participate in the Presidential Entrepreneurship Summit in Washington D.C., USA.

In recognition to Tamara’s contribution to spark business innovation and entrepreneurship in the MENA region, she has been ranked at number 39 of 100 Most Powerful Arab Women for 2011.

Tamara participated in many national and international conferences, as a lecturer and key-note speaker on the topics of strategic and operational management, as well as business process management. During the past years, Tamara participated in several business related studies in the fields of business valuations using DCF, design of management and reporting systems, review of strategic planning and management systems, process assessments and optimization, definition of requirements for enterprise applications (ERP and CRM) as well as; setup of Balanced Scorecard systems.

Born on June 21st 1976, Tamara Abdel-Jaber graduated from the University of Jordan in Amman, where she received her bachelor degree in Accounting and Finance with honors. And she was certified as a Public Accountant (CPA) in 1997 from Delaware - USA. She started her professional career in 1997, as an accountant at the Computer and Engineering Bureau (CEB). In 1998, she was assigned the Financial Manager position at the CEB Group of companies where she was responsible for financial management, planning and budgeting. And in 2001, as the Chief Planning Officer (Internal Consultant); Tamara worked on strategic planning and budgeting, project management, corporate re-structuring; as well as; performance measurement and management.

In 2002 Tamara co-founded Palma, and started as a Deputy General Manager, responsible for business development, strategy consulting, process management consulting, pre-sales, in addition to coaching and training. Palma currently employs 20+ consultants, has several international alliances and business partners, and is actively providing its consulting services to large organizations across the Arab region.

Nikhil Agarwal is President and Senior partner at Cambridge Global Partners (CGP). Prior, he was Professor of Management and founder Director of Europe Asia Business School. 
Dr Agarwal has founded businesses and advised firms on strategic matters in last 15 years of his career. He has worked with global multinationals like Cadbury's, FIC and Zensar (RPG Group). He has lectured at leading universities like Virginia Tech, Univ of Bradford, Univ of Edinburgh and Univ of Cambridge in visiting capacity. His interviews and work has been extensively covered in international media including HBR, CNN Money, BBC Radio, The New York Times to name a few. 
He has served on many international think-tanks and hold leadership positions in global organizations. He is serving as high-level-advisor to United Nations Global Alliance on ICT & Development (UNGAID); board member at World-Entrepreneurship-Forum and Open Mind Foundation respectively. He was the first Asian to be elected as Co-Chair of prestigious Internet Society Advisory Council (ISOC-AC) for 2008-10. 
He has traveled extensively around the world and worked with global institutions, corporations and multinationals. He has published over 40 research papers, conference publications and articles in leading publications. 

Dr Nikhil Agarwal is alumnus of University of Cambridge, United Kingdom.

Hikari Akizawa is a faculty member of Chuo University, a private university in Tokyo, established in 1885, teaching entrepreneurship and knowledge management for nine years. Her research interests are in entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial family business. Dr. Akizawa also has broad professional experiences in the field of entrepreneurship, organizational learning, and knowledge management.