Meditari is an advisory firm, established in Dubai in 2018. It runs two AI-focused practices. One advises on the economics of AI: strategy, capacity and execution. The other is an executive search practice for AI leadership. Both serve the same organisations: government and semi-government bodies, telecoms operators, banks, multinationals and large family groups, across the Gulf and Europe.
Meditari does not execute or build AI solutions itself. We assess the needs and requirements, recommend the route and strategy, structure the specifications and terms, then hand over.
Delivery is carried out by an execution partner appointed for the work.
We have vetted a range of execution partners and recommend one according to the scope of the project and the expertise required, or we work with a partner the client has already chosen.
Either way, we oversee the delivery against the terms we set.
Meditari’s partners built their careers in telecoms, at operators, vendors and network equipment companies across the Gulf, Europe and Asia. The firm was established in Dubai in 2018 on that experience.
Its early mandates took regulated mobile entrants from licence application to launch, negotiating with governments and regulators, technology providers, incumbent operators and investors. Meditari does that same work now, for AI.
Ziad Matar
Managing Partner
Ziad Matar is managing partner of Meditari, the advisory firm he founded in Dubai in 2018. He began his career at Ericsson in 1996 and moved to Qualcomm in 2008, where he led strategic business development across the Middle East and Africa. He is co-founder of Tokenando, an intelligence business focused on the economics of artificial intelligence, and editor-in-chief of The Compute, its weekly publication on the same subject. He sits on the board of Potential.com, an AI-powered platform for large-scale empowerment and workforce programmes, and one of Meditari’s execution partners. He has been a charter member of The Indus Entrepreneur since 2012 and served as president of its Dubai chapter in 2019 and 2020.
Elsa Babik
Partner, Executive Search
Elsa Babik has worked in executive search since 2003 and has focused on AI leadership since 2024. She began her career as an executive search associate at Amrop International. Her placements span technology firms, consumer goods companies, financial institutions and family-owned conglomerates across the Middle East, and include a Chief AI Officer and senior technology and transformation roles at a sovereign wealth fund and a regional bank. She founded Promomz*, a mobile platform connecting professional mothers with work. She is the partner responsible for the executive search practice and leads every mandate directly.
Hani Yassin
Partner, Technology
Hani Yassin has worked in telecommunications since the 1990s. He was regional chief technology officer at Qualcomm for the Middle East, Africa, and Central and Southeast Asia, and went on to Rakuten Symphony, where he led pre-sales and solutions architecture for North America. His work covers 5G and 6G, Open RAN, cloud-native network architecture, and the integration of AI and machine learning into networks. He works across all three advisory services: strategy, capacity and execution.
Ricardo Tavares
Partner, Policy and Regulatory
Ricardo Tavares advises on public policy and regulation in AI, semiconductors and communications technologies. Since 2004 his work has concentrated on EMEA and South Asia. He has negotiated with governments on behalf of Google, Ericsson and ByteDance, designed the privatisation of state-owned telecoms operators for the World Bank, and advised Inmarsat, GSMA, Vodafone, Telenor Group and Confidential Core AI, a startup working on security for AI agents. He works across all three advisory services, most often on strategy.
Meditari draws on a network of senior advisers across telecoms, semiconductors and technology policy.
