IDC, Couchbase & AWS Roundtable
Women in Tech: Owning Saudi Arabia's AI Moment
Hosted By
Resilience, for the women leading Saudi Arabia’s digital economy, is both architectural and personal — and this evening treats the two as one topic, not two.
IDC’s CIO Sentiment Survey finds that AI has moved from strategic talking point to execution problem for CIOs across the region, and most organizations still cannot prove it is working — a measurement gap that now sits alongside the talent and resilience challenge on every leader’s desk. Closing that gap also means naming, openly, what it takes as a woman to make the calls behind it, often as the first, or only, woman in the room.
AWS and Couchbase, in association with IDC, invite the Kingdom’s eminent women leaders to a private dining room at the cozy ZUMA Riyadh — an intimate setting built for the kind of candid conversation that brings lasting impact — to discuss what it takes to build future-ready digital ecosystems, and to build it as leaders, not only as architects.
Discussion Areas
The Weight of Being First, or One of Few
Many women in this room have made a major technology or budget call as the only woman present. This conversation opens with that experience — how it shapes the way you mentor, delegate, and decide — because it is the lens every other topic tonight runs through.
Resilience as a Personal, Everyday Leadership Habit
IDC expects half of CIOs to broaden their security and continuity strategies by 2026, a shift from crisis response to standing practice. The same shift applies to how a leader runs herself and her team: resilience is a habit built daily, not a plan reached for in a crisis.
Leading Through the Talent Shortage
IDC projects that 90% of organizations worldwide will feel the impact of the IT skills crisis by 2026, at a cost of up to USD 5.5 trillion in delays and lost revenue. Closing that gap falls disproportionately to the leaders in this room — what does it take, personally, to hold a team together through sustained scarcity?
The Measurement Gap on Every CIO's Desk
IDC’s CIO Sentiment Survey finds that AI has shifted from strategic talking point to execution problem across META, and most organizations still cannot prove it is working. That gap is a leadership and measurement problem before it is a technology one — and proving value under scrutiny is its own test of resilience.
Agenda
IDC, Couchbase & AWS Roundtable
Wed, Nov 11
Registration & Networking
Welcome Address
Nagia El-Emary
Country Director, Egypt and META Custom Solutions, IDC
Resilient Leadership in the AI Era: Architecting KSA’s Tech Future for Vision 2030
Trimmed from the original to context-setting: how these leaders architect resilience in their infrastructure, hybrid/cloud environments and security posture — and how that is inseparable from their own resilience as leaders, often built while being the first or only woman in the room.
Nagia El-Emary
Country Director, Egypt and META Custom Solutions, IDC
Reem Habashi
Regional Channel & Alliances Director, Central Europe & Emerging Markets (EMEA), Couchbase
Roundtable: Leading as the First, or One of Few.
A moderated, off-the-record conversation among the room, not a panel presenting to it. Prompts: a call you made alone that you’d make differently today; how you mentor differently because of how you came up; what resilience looks like in your calendar, not just your architecture.
Closing Reflection
Each attendee shares, in one sentence, the resilience lesson she is taking into the next year.
Dinner & Continued Conversation
Speakers
Nagia El-Emary
Country Director, Egypt and META Custom Solutions
IDC
Read bio
Nagia El-Emary
Reem Habashi
Regional Channel & Alliances Director, Central Europe & Emerging Markets (EMEA)
Couchbase
Read bio
Reem Habashi
Afaf Chekkar
Managing Director, MENAT Partner Business
AWS
Read bio
Afaf Chekkar
Partners
Hosted By
Couchbase & AWS
Couchbase, the operational data platform for AI, empowers businesses to succeed by bringing data to life in new ways. Major market-leading companies rely on Couchbase for mission critical operational, analytical, mobile and AI workloads. Built to replace legacy infrastructure and fragmented data services, Couchbase empowers enterprises with a unified platform architected for performance, flexibility and global scale.
With Couchbase, organizations bring their data to life, launching game-changing customer experiences, exploring the limitless potential of AI, and seamlessly extending applications from the cloud to the edge and beyond. Couchbase’s AI-ready technology and enterprise partnership model eliminate complexity and reduce total cost of ownership, enabling teams to stay agile, innovative and secure.
Couchbase believes data should never slow you down, but act as the foundation for your next breakthrough. Discover why Couchbase is trusted to help the world’s biggest players scale, move fast and stay resilient, no matter what’s next on their roadmap.
