Senior Etisalat executive awarded prestigious honour for communications excellence

Ahmed bin Ali, group senior vice president corporate communications for Etisalat, has received the individual honour at the Middle East Corporate and Media Communication Excellence Awards.   He received the Corporate PR Executive Excellence Award, an accolade that recognises an established practitioner for exceptional leadership, professional accomplishments and career achievements.
Ali al Kamali, managing director of Datamatix Group said: “This tremendous award is testament to bin Ali’s professionalism and leadership.  He has built a world class communications function which has grown in size and scope to support the expansion of the Etisalat group across 17 markets in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Corporate communications has been instrumental in building trust, awareness and understanding of the Etisalat brand among diverse stakeholder groups across the globe, and it has helped to pave the way for expansion in to new markets.”
Comprising international and regional industry experts, the judging panel was looking for candidates demonstrating exceptional leadership and outstanding achievements in public relations.  Nominees also had to have a sound grasp of public relations strategy and tactics, and make specific contributions to society, the PR profession and their employer.
A key factor in Ahmed bin Ali’s success in developing the corporate communications function is his deep and broad understanding of the Etisalat business and the telecoms sector.  He joined Etisalat’s engineering department in 1991 and held a number of commercial, operational, sales and business development roles before joining the corporate communications team in 2003. Today as a Senior Vice President he leads the Etisalat’s group communications across its seventeen countries of operations whose combined populations now exceed 1bn people.
In his current role bin Ali has successfully built a unique and innovative reputation for the Group across all its operations and beyond and has helped make the organisation well recognized as a leading international telecom group.
His key achievements and responsibilities include building a positive Etisalat Group reputation internationally amongst all stakeholders and media, including industry and government, fostering communication amongst the Group and its OpCos and ensuring coordinated corporate social responsibility activities across the Group and its operating companies.
Bin Ali has a BA in Electrical Engineering from the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut, USA, and an MBA from the University of Hull in England.  He has participated as a board member of Arabsat and as the Vice Chairman of the International Public Relations Association (IPRA).  He is also a member of IEEE (Europe) and the USA Speakers Association.
Moreover, Etisalat has been ranked in the Global 500 most valuable brands in the annual study conducted by Brand Finance.
The Middle East Corporate and Media Communication Excellence Awards were held during the second GCC Government Corporate and Media Communication Competitiveness Development Conference.