The ChangeMakers Magazine, Council for International Relations & Diplomacy
In the corridors of Dubai’s Jumeirah Lakes Towers, where Feryal Ahmadi has spent two decades shaping one of the world’s great trading hubs, a newer mandate now sits alongside her corporate portfolio — one that stretches far beyond the UAE’s borders and into the economic architecture of the Global South.
As Deputy CEO and Chief Operating Officer of DMCC, Ahmadi has long been recognised for the operational discipline behind Dubai’s rise as a commodities and enterprise capital, overseeing the growth of Uptown Dubai and JLT into districts that today host tens of thousands of companies and account for a significant share of the emirate’s GDP and foreign direct investment. But it is her appointment as Chairperson of the UAE Chapter of the BRICS Women’s Business Alliance (WBA) that positions her at the centre of a distinctly geopolitical conversation — one about who gets a seat at the table as the BRICS bloc redraws global trade relationships.
A Platform Built for Economic Inclusion
The BRICS Women’s Business Alliance was established in 2020 under Russia’s chairmanship of the bloc, conceived as a standing forum working alongside the BRICS Business Council to widen women’s participation in commerce across member and partner economies. Its mandate is unambiguous: sustainable development, the reduction of inequality, and — critically — ensuring that women entrepreneurs and executives are not spectators to the bloc’s expanding economic weight but active shapers of it.
As UAE Chair, Ahmadi sits among a roster of counterparts spanning South Africa, Iran, Brazil and beyond, each leading national chapters that feed into working groups on tourism, innovation, and inclusive economic growth. It is a structure that mirrors, in miniature, the kind of multilateral coordination the BRICS grouping itself is attempting on a grander scale — and it places an Emirati institution builder squarely inside a network built by, and largely for, women navigating leadership in emerging and re-emerging economic powers.
From District Governance to Diplomatic Representation
Ahmadi’s path to this role is not incidental. Her governance of DMCC’s Smart and Sustainable District Strategy, and her standing as an official DMCC spokesperson on global platforms, have already made her one of the more visible faces of Dubai’s economic diplomacy — a role reinforced by her repeated appearances on Forbes Middle East’s Top 100 Most Powerful Businesswomen list and her inclusion among Arabian Business’s Top 100 Most Inspiring Women in 2025.
Her BRICS WBA chairship extends that visibility into a bloc whose combined economic heft continues to grow, and whose internal debates over trade rules, currency arrangements and investment flows increasingly shape decisions made far from Dubai’s own boardrooms. For a UAE that formally joined BRICS as a partner economy, having an operator of Ahmadi’s standing represent the country’s women in business at this table is as much a statement of national positioning as it is a personal achievement.
Sustainability and Inclusion as Throughlines
Ahmadi’s BRICS role does not sit in isolation from the rest of her public work. She remains a member of the Women Empowerment Principles committee established by the UN Global Compact and UN Women, and continues to lead DMCC’s broader sustainability programmes while serving on several semi-governmental boards across the UAE. Most recently, she has spoken publicly as a Supporting Partner representative for the Dubai Women Establishment’s Emirati Women’s Forum 2026, framing women’s advancement as “fundamental to advancing and sustaining Dubai’s long-term economic ambitions.”
That framing — economic necessity rather than symbolic gesture — appears to be the throughline connecting her DMCC mandate, her sustainability advocacy, and her BRICS chairship alike. In each forum, the argument is the same: inclusive leadership is not a parallel track to economic growth but a precondition for it.
Why It Matters
For a magazine tracking the institutions and individuals shaping cross-border commerce and diplomacy, Ahmadi’s dual footing — as a senior architect of Dubai’s own trading infrastructure and now as a formal conduit into BRICS’s women-led economic diplomacy — is worth watching closely. As the WBA’s working groups convene around tourism, innovation and inclusive economic development, and as the BRICS Business Forum continues to draw global attention, Ahmadi’s UAE chapter will be one measure of how seriously the bloc’s stated commitments to gender-inclusive trade translate into practice.
Two decades into her career at DMCC, Feryal Ahmadi is no longer simply building districts. She is helping build the case for who leads the next phase of global trade — and ensuring women are named explicitly in that answer.
This article is part of The ChangeMakers Magazine’s CIRD ongoing coverage of leadership figures shaping international trade, diplomacy and economic policy.
editor@thechangemakers.news
