Alain Bejjani

Alain Bejjani is a Lebanese business leader, investor, and author, and a member of the Advisory Board of the School of Engineering at the Lebanese American University (LAU). He brings to the role more than two decades of experience building and leading large, complex organizations, alongside a long-held commitment to the development of Lebanese and Arab talent.

He is best known as the former Chief Executive Officer of Majid Al Futtaim, one of the Middle East’s largest diversified consumer and lifestyle groups, which he led from 2015 to 2023. Under his leadership the group operated across 17 countries and employed nearly 45,000 people from more than 100 nationalities, spanning retail, real estate, hospitality, leisure, and financial services. He guided the business through a period of profound technological and economic change, driving one of the region’s most significant digital transformations and reshaping how a major enterprise approaches talent, technology, and long-term value.

That experience sits at the heart of what he brings to the School of Engineering. Bejjani has long argued that in an economy increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence and automation, human judgment and human capability grow more valuable, not less, and that engineering education must therefore prepare graduates not only to master technology but to lead with it. He writes and speaks on these themes internationally, and develops them for a global readership in his book, NEXT: Leading Through the New Realities (2026).

Bejjani’s ties to Lebanon run throughout his career. From 2000 to 2005 he served as Executive Vice Chairman of the Investment Development Authority of Lebanon (IDAL), the country’s national investment-promotion agency, working to bring capital and opportunity to Lebanon. He remains closely engaged with the country’s future and the wider region’s development. Internationally, he served as Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum on the Middle East and North Africa in 2019, a member of the Forum’s Leadership Council, and sits on the board of the Atlantic Council in Washington DC.

A graduate in law of the University of Paris XII (Paris-Est Créteil), he works in Arabic, French, and English and is based in Dubai. Through his service on the Advisory Board, he supports the School of Engineering’s mission to prepare the next generation of Lebanese engineers and innovators to shape the future.