Architects Of Trust: Maya El Hachem

Booz & Company in the Middle East. Mergers and acquisitions investment banking at Bank of Amer ica Merrill Lynch in London. Then, in 2015, Boston Consulting Group (BCG). Maya El Hachem’s career has run through two quite different advisory set tings, and today it centers on one question: do the people inside an institution have the capability to match its ambitions?

At BCG, El Hachem leads work in human capital development and social impact strategies and trans formations across the GCC. Her responsibilities also include leading the firm’s offices in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Her academic background spans computer and communication engineering, finance and management, including an MBA from INSEAD.

Her current practice reaches across government authorities, private businesses, investors and non profit organizations. It covers strategy, operating models and transformation, as well as support for megaprojects and tourism development. Put sim ply, her work sits at the point where a plan has to become an organization’s ability to act.

Education offers one example of her published thinking. El Hachem co-authored BCG’s Decem ber 2024 article The Power of Disruption in K-12 Education, which examines why new tools and isolated experiments do not necessarily produce change across an education system. The authors argue for a broader approach involving govern ments, businesses and schools.

Notably, their analysis gives institutional responsibilities as much attention as technology. Governments help set the conditions for innovation; companies work with educators to develop solutions that can be adopted more widely; and school leaders create an environment in which teachers can experiment and improve their practice. The emphasis falls on the relationships needed to turn an idea into sustained delivery.

The article also proposes assessing innovations against both their potential impact and their feasibility. That includes the people and funding required, the time needed to implement a change and whether it can reach beyond a small group of institutions. It’s a discipline any founder or trans formation program could borrow: enthusiasm needs to come with a credible account of execution.

That is the human and institutional dimension El Hachem brings to the table. Her remit and her co authored work both point to the capacity behind a promise of progress, because confidence in a strategy depends partly on whether the people expected to deliver it have the preparation, sup port and organizational clarity to do so. Across the GCC, the link between ambition and capability is where the real work gets done.

“Maya El Hachem’s career has run through two quite different advisory settings, and today it centers on one question: do the people inside an institution have the capability to match its ambitions?