Team

Prior to that he worked as a Renewable Energies Expert with WEE Pros company working on the potential of investment in the Renewable Energies in Anbar. He was also the Public Relations Specialist with Morshed Business Development company managing clients’ accounts including SAP, LG, DAMAC, GIZ, UNDP, CAREEM and others. He also worked on the GIZ PSD project in Mosul to develop the policies and support the commercial and industrial chambers by developing a guidelines material on how to start a business in Iraq, conducting a ToT session for the chambers’ staff on how they can leverage these materials.

He also holds a bachelor’s degree in the field of the Energy and Renewable Energies Engineering from the University of Technology in Iraq, ranked at 7th out of 98, and a Professional Diploma in Public Policy and Leadership from the American University of Sharjah.

Othman is fluent in Arabic and English.

From the beginning of Mr. Alkateeb journey in Iraq which began in 2003, he has been advancing Iraq’s economic and social priorities, having been involved in several assignments with USAID, DFID UK, and the US Treasury. Under the flagship USAID project “Tijara” the Iraqi Youth Initiative stood out for its engagement in building out the ecosystem for young entrepreneurs.

More recently, Mr. Alkateeb was engaged in furthering Iraq strategic aims in the electricity sector with Siemens and previously with Honeywell in the oil and gas sector.

Other assignments in Iraq included advisory roles at the Ministries of Trade, Defense, and Finance.

Mr. Alkateeb holds a BA in Communication from George Mason University (Virginia, USA) and an MBA from the London Business School (UK). – He is Iraqi-American and fluent in Arabic and English.

During his professional career in New Zealand and overseas, Harry was involved in more than 40 large to mid-scale projects with hands-on experience in feasibility studies, project’s economic evaluation, design, installation, and commissioning of power generation, transmission, distribution networks and most recently seawater desalination. He worked for major international engineering consultancy firms including Parsons Brinckerhoff, AECOM, Power Engineers Inc at different capacities. He was also appointed by many international organizations including the World Bank, USAID and USTDA to work on several development projects in Asia and Africa.

Harry Istepanian is considered one of the pioneer researchers in energy economics, policies and reform in post-conflict states, most specifically Iraq. During the last several years, as a senior fellow of Iraq Energy Institute, he was advocating for reforming the electricity sector in Iraq and introducing PPP as a way to resolve the country’s power shortage. He has several published op-eds, peer review articles, and conference papers published in international journals and magazines including Brookings Institute, Power Engineering International and the Electricity Journal.

Raeid was recently a Principal Advisor at GaffneyCline and led on a variety of projects in the oil and gas commercial and energy transition space with major IOCs, NOCs and Governments.

Raeid started his career as a Wireline Field Engineer with Schlumberger working in the North Sea, Western Siberia and Gulf of Mexico.  He then joined Shell as a Petrophysicist in the Netherlands working on the Groningen field.  He was then promoted to Senior Commercial Advisor and based in Dubai working on a JV between Shell, Petronas and Basra Oil Company, developing one of the largest oilfields in the world in South Iraq.

Raeid then joined Crescent Petroleum and headed all the company’s commercial and business development operations in the MENA region.

Raeid also spent a few years working in the UK Government as Senior Policy Advisor on Energy in the Department of Business Innovation and Skills in Westminster.

Raeid holds a BEng (Hons) in Materials Science & Engineering from Brunel University (UK) and a PhD from the University of Cambridge (UK).

Raeid is British-Iraq and fluent in Arabic and English.