Senior Executive Director- Business Development

About This Role

POSITION OBJECTIVE

The Senior Executive Director – Business Development provides enterprise-level strategic leadership to architect and execute at the forefront of institutional growth, sector expansion, and enterprise revenue performance aiming for 5X growth in 5 Years.

The incumbent is responsible for governing enterprise commercial architecture, sector diversification, institutional revenue sustainability, bid governance oversight, solution design alignment, pricing discipline, and commercial risk mitigation. This role ensures scalable, diversified, and margin-accretive growth aligned with long-term strategic objectives and institutional capability.

This role involves cultivating strong institutional and government relationships, identifying new market opportunities, and developing comprehensive growth strategies to expand reach across sectors and geographies. The Executive Director will lead the Business Development function to ensure alignment with overall mission and long-term strategic objectives.

ACADEMIC QUALIFICATIONS

A Master’s degree in Business Administration, Strategy, Management, or a related field is required with executive education or advanced commercial leadership qualifications being highly preferred.

Doctoral qualification considered advantageous

SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

Experience

• Minimum of 15–20 years of progressive experience in Business Development, Commercial Strategy, or Enterprise Growth leadership.

• Proven track record managing diversified large-scale revenue portfolios with multi-sector expansion.

• Experience supervising Executive Director-level leaders and commercial vertical heads.

• Extensive experience in UAE institutional and government markets within multi-cultural environments.

Technical & Strategic Expertise

• Enterprise growth strategy execution aligned to ≥30% CAGR performance expectations.

• Revenue diversification and concentration risk governance frameworks.

• Pricing architecture, margin protection, and contract structuring expertise.

• Pipeline forecasting governance with structured variance control discipline.

• Thorough Knowledge of strategic revenue planning, enterprise forecasting, and commercial governance frameworks in post-secondary/tertiary education and lifelong learning.

• Knowledge of contract administration, negotiations, business planning and change management

• Ability to analyze and interpret revenue performance, pipeline data, and margin metrics.

• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills and a polished, professional presence with proven ability to build strong client relationships from the C-level of target clients.

• Exceptional presentation and bespoke solutions selling skills with proven success in with contemporary higher educational practices, learning theories, active learning and formative, authentic assessment products.

• Knowledge of communication, marketing, and public relation techniques aligned to growth strategyManagement & Leadership Skills

• Enterprise growth strategy execution aligned to ≥30% CAGR performance expectations.

• Revenue diversification and concentration risk governance frameworks.

• Pricing architecture, margin protection, and contract structuring expertise.

• Pipeline forecasting governance with structured variance control discipline

• Ability to build and motivate high-performance Business Development teams.

• Strong leadership capability in managing enterprise-level growth targets and transformation initiatives.

• Previous leadership experience within rapid change or transformation in Education & Training

• Superior management and leadership skills as demonstrated by the ability to form professional relationships at all levels of government, the organization and with appropriate external stakeholders as well as the ability to work effectively with a wide range of constituencies in a diverse community