She advises governments across the Middle East and Europe on education, human capital, innovation, and socioeconomic growth. Leila leads large-scale RDI initiatives, including national research, development, and innovation (RDI) strategies, research grant programs, governance frameworks, and multi-sector innovation sandboxes.
She began her career as a research scientist at Schlumberger, working on borehole telemetry, and later managed a team of six scientists at a Cambridge research center, contributing to scientific publications and patents.
She was recognized as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum (2014) and named among the region’s most influential women by Forbes Middle East (2021, 2023, 2024).
Leila holds a PhD in Signal Processing and a BSc in Electrical Engineering from Imperial College London, and an MBA from INSEAD