Registration / Networking / Coffee Break

Culture as a System: The Real Performance Strategy

Culture isn’t the soft side of business – it is the business. This keynote reframes culture as the hidden engine behind innovation, growth, and retention. It shows how organizations that intentionally design culture as a performance system – not an HR initiative – unlock measurable results in productivity, engagement, and brand love.

Through real regional examples, the talk explores how culture becomes a living operating model – embedded into leadership behavior, communication, and the everyday employee experience. From architecture to mindset, from rituals to systems, this keynote demonstrates that the future belongs to companies that are powered from within.

Ibrahem Mohamed Naguib

Managing Director

Great Place To Work

Lightning Round – Powered by CLTR TEAM

Culture at Scale: How Innovation-Driven Companies Build High-Performing Workplaces

In today’s accelerated tech landscape, culture isn’t a nice-to-have it’s a competitive differentiator. This panel brings the most influential digital companies to explore how they build inclusive, future-ready cultures that scale with innovation.

From one organization’s people-first, capability-building approach to another’s mission of giving everyone a voice and helping creators succeed, both organizations are redefining what inclusion means in a digital era. Through accessible platforms, creator enablement programs, digital-skills training, and community-driven initiatives, they have built ecosystems where talent, ideas, and opportunities become open to all.

This discussion unpacks how inclusion becomes a business advantage boosting creativity, strengthening trust, and creating workplaces and platforms where people feel empowered to grow, contribute, and belong.

Ahmed El Bossati

Country HR Director

Capgemini

Rana Aslan

People and Culture Director

Enpal Egypt

Alexandra Saad

Senior Director, People & Culture

Nawy

Lightning Round – Powered by MENA AI TECH

Hybrid but Human: Designing Workplaces People Choose to Belong To

As hybrid work becomes the norm, organizations are reimagining what the workplace means beyond desks, locations, and policies. This panel explores how leading companies intentionally design cultural rituals, physical spaces, and employee experiences that make people want to show up.

We also examine how technology and AI are becoming silent enablers of belonging from personalized employee insights to smarter collaboration tools helping leaders build more connected, human-centered hybrid cultures. Through real case examples, we uncover what truly drives belonging, engagement, and shared identity in today’s blended work environments.

Mahmoud El-Tahan

Director, Talent Acquisition

Capgemini

Nermine Elnemr

Founder & CEO

Elharefa & Workshift Summit

Hala Elshahat

Director,People and Culture

CONNECT Professional Services

Lightning Round – Powered by Beyond Insurance Brokerage

Wellbeing as Strategy: How Care Became a Business Imperative

Wellbeing is no longer about programs or perks it’s about how organizations are designed, led, and measured. This panel brings together leaders who have embedded wellbeing into culture, leadership behaviors, and performance systems. 

From psychological safety and burnout prevention to sustainable energy and trust, the discussion explores how organizations move from reactive wellness initiatives to proactive wellbeing strategies that drive resilience, engagement, and long-term performance.

Sherry Bishara

Chief People & Corporate Sustainability Officer, CEO Magnet (Beltone Management Solutions), CEO Beltone Academy

Beltone Holding

Yassmin Yassin

HRBP Lead

AXA Egypt

Muhammad Hazem Sherif

Co-founder & Head Of Growth

ElCoach Tech

Sarah Kamal

Country HR Director

L’Oreal

Lightning Round – Powered by Crinel

From Purpose to Performance: Building Culture as Your Competitive Edge

In an era where every organization speaks about transformation, only a few truly turn culture into an engine of growth. In this session, Mohamed Shelbaya shares how purpose, people, and performance can come together to create lasting business momentum.

Drawing from his leadership experience and PepsiCo’s regional journey, he will explore how empathy, innovation, and operational discipline work together when culture is treated as a strategic asset. The session will show how leaders can build engaged teams, drive meaningful impact, and translate purpose into measurable Performance.

Mohamed Shelbaya

Senior Vice President & CEO, MEA FOBO

PepsiCo

PLAY: THE CULTURE WORKOUT

What if we treated workplace culture less like something to fix, and more like something to practice? Drawing on five years of building Society of Play, Ramez Youssef explores an employee-first approach to culture. From the science behind play to real experiences with employees, leadership teams and CEOs. Through connection, creativity and shared experiences, he looks at how play can become more than a one-off team-building activity, but an ongoing practice for building stronger, more connected teams.

Ramez Youssef

CEO & Founder

Society of Play

SOP Game / Networking / Lunch Break

Leading Through Change: Turning Strategy into People-Centered Performance

In a business environment defined by disruption, growth, and constant change, leaders are being asked to do more than set direction they must align strategy with people, and performance with purpose. This fireside chat explores how organizations can navigate transformation while keeping empathy, accountability, and execution in balance.

Through a candid conversation we’ll examine how leaders translate vision into action, build trust during change, and create cultures where performance and humanity coexists. The session will highlight practical lessons on sustainable growth, leadership alignment, and the role of people strategy in delivering long-term business value.

Islam Saadany

Strategy Expert & MD

Forefront Consulting

Hassan Elanany

CEO

Business Fitness International

Lightning Round – Powered by AlMentor

The Human Side of Transformation: Leading Culture Change in a Digital Group

Organizations talk a lot about digital transformation, restructuring, and growth. They talk much less about what happens to people, behaviors, and culture when all of that happens at speed.

In this fireside chat, Hassan Helmy, Group Head of HR at eFinance Investment Group, shares how leaders can guide people through major organizational change including growth, restructuring, and bringing different businesses together under one group.

The conversation will explore how to keep people aligned, engaged, and focused on performance while the organization evolves. It will also look at how leaders can use data, clear communication, and practical people strategies to build trust, reduce uncertainty, and help teams move forward together.

Hassan Helmy

Group Head of HR

efinance Investment Group

Lightning Round – Powered by E FINANCE

The Architecture of Culture: Designing Organizations for Growth, Trust & Performance

Culture doesn’t happen by chance it is intentionally designed.

As organizations grow, sustaining a strong culture requires more than values on a wall or standalone HR initiatives. It demands deliberate systems that connect leadership, learning, employee experience, internal communication, and data to create environments where people and businesses thrive.

This panel brings together leaders from different sectors to explore how organizations can intentionally design cultures that drive engagement, accelerate learning, strengthen trust, and prepare talent for the future. Through practical examples and real experiences from AI-powered people strategies and culture transformation to future skills development and employee growth the discussion will examine how culture becomes a measurable business capability rather than an abstract concept.

Attendees will leave with actionable insights on building scalable, people-first cultures that fuel long-term performance, innovation, and organizational resilience.

Myrna Fahmy

Culture Transformation & People Development Sr. Manager

Dsquares

Emam Awad

Head of the Career Centre

The British University in Egypt

Dr. Shaimaa Hassan

Head of People Growth & Internal commuincation

Abnaa Sinai for trading

Sara El-Rouby

Chief People & Culture Officer

Azza Fahmy Jewellery

Lightning Round – Powered by CLTR Team

The Employee Experience Advantage: Turning Everyday Work into a Brand People Trust

In 2026, candidates and employees no longer believe in polished employer brand campaigns. They believe in what they experience every day: how they are treated, how they are communicated with, how they grow, and whether the workplace feels human.

This panel brings together employee experience, internal communications, and employer branding leaders to explore how organizations can turn everyday work into a credible employer brand. The discussion will focus on how to design employee experiences that people genuinely want to talk about, how to use authentic storytelling and narrative to reflect reality, and how to measure whether the brand promise matches life inside the organization.

Through real examples, the speakers will show how employee happiness, engagement, digital transformation, and internal communication shape the way talent sees, feels, and chooses an employer and how organizations can close the gap between brand and experience.

Marwa AbdelMaksoud

Group People Experience & Corporate Culture Director

pulse by solutions

Leidya Boutros

Employer Engagement Director

The American University in Cairo

Karim Maher

Head of Employee Engagement & Experience

Vodafone Egypt

Wessam Elshazli

CEO/Creative Director

Squad branding firm

SQUAD – Lightning Round

Culture Needs Capability: Building the Skills Engine Behind High-Performance Organizations

We talk a lot about culture about values, behaviors, and the way work gets done. But culture doesn’t live in slogans or posters. It lives in what people are actually capable of doing every day.

This fireside chat explores the connection between culture, business performance, and capability building.

With Sally Metwally, Chief Business Development Officer at Almentor, the leading online learning platform in the MENA region, we will examine how organizations can move from “culture initiatives” to building the skills engine that makes high-performance cultures real and sustainable.

The conversation will cover:

• How learning and capability building are not “nice to have” they are the infrastructure behind culture.
• Why do many organizations invest heavily in culture programs but under-invest in the skills and behaviors needed to bring that culture to life.
• Why, despite more learning content than ever, companies still struggle to build the capabilities they need.
• Whether the Middle East requires a different approach to learning and capability building compared with global markets.
• How partnerships like Almentor × Udemy reflect the need to combine global learning with regional relevance.
• What AI-driven disruption means for the traditional corporate learning model.
• How HR and L&D leaders can evaluate whether their learning strategy is genuinely creating business impact, not just completion rates.
• How the role of learning platforms is evolving from content providers to strategic partners in building organizational capability.

This session is for CEOs, CHROs, HR and L&D leaders, and executives who want to leave with a clearer view of how to connect culture, capability, and performance and how to build a learning strategy that actually moves the business needle.

Sally Metwally

Chief Business Development Officer

almentor

Lightning Round – Powered by Crinel

Belonging at Scale: Designing Fair, Inclusive Cultures That Perform

As organizations scale, belonging becomes harder and more critical.

This session explores how leaders design fair systems for hiring, promotion, feedback, and growth across diverse workforces. The discussion focuses on practical leadership choices that create trust and inclusion, ensuring people feel they belong not because they fit in, but because the system works for them.

Dr. Amr Salem

Chief People Officer

Holcim Egypt

Sally Houssam Hussein

Chief Human Resources Officer

Hassan Allam Properties

Raffle & CLOSING