Dr. Mahmoud AlBurai, Director Real Estate Policies & Innovation, Dubai Land Department

Dr. Mahmoud AlBurai is currently serving as senior director of real estate policies and innovation at Dubai land department, senior advisor to the Director General of Dubai Land Department in addition and senior advisor to Dubai Police Emergency and Disasters(Resilience) Centre. Before this role, Mahmoud has served as the CEO of Dubai Real estate Institute for 10 years in which the institute graduated 80,000 real estate professionals from the region and 4 years as Director of Real estate sector development in Dubai. Mahmoud is an Alumni of Sh Mohamad Bin Rashid Leadership program since 2014 (Government leaders program) Mahmoud is the Chairman of UNDRR ARISE network in the UAE working on lobbying the private sector to support building resilience in the UAE. Recently he was elected as Vice Chair of Global Arise (UNDRR). In 2021, he was selected as one of 10 City Changers by the World Urban Campaign of the UN Habitat recognizing his role in lobbying stakeholders to advance SDGs and deal with climate change. Before that he served on the board of International Real estate Society (IRES) for 5 years. He served as the Chairman of UN Global Compact UAE from 2015-2020 and represented MENA region in UN Global Compact advisory board for 2016-2018. In his role as UN Global Compact MENA representative led many SDG’s driven initiatives. He started youth ambassadors programs in seven UAE universities recruiting over 150 youth, train them to help businesses become more sustainable. He also led establishing Women empowerment principles platform in the UAE with 60 companies signing on WEPs commitment. To promote SDGs among business, Mahmoud launched SDGs pioneers UAE celebrating SDGs success stories of private and government organizations. Moreover, Mahmoud leads the affordable Housing working-group at World Economic Forum. Mahmoud also serves as an advisor-MENA region at Happy City Lab, headquartered in Canada which works on integrating happiness into urban design. Mahmoud is assistant professor of Management at the American University in Dubai since 2013 and the Director of Middle East Cities Centre at the American University in Dubai since 2020 working on research and development related to field of sustainability, resilience and competitiveness. Mahmoud is also Faculty at Mohamad Bin Rashid School of Government focusing on training government officials from Middle East and Asia on leadership, sustainability and competitiveness. He lectured to more than 500 government officials in the last 3 years. Mahmoud is also the Vice President of International real estate federation, FIABCI Arabic Countries since 2016 , Chairman of FIABCI Emirates and sits on the board of International Real estate Federation, the world largest global real estate network of more than 1.5 million associate members. Before that he served on the board of International Real estate Society (IRES) for 5 years and the board of National Association of Realtors(NAR), 1.3 million member real estate network based in Chicago for the years 2019-2020. Mahmoud completed his bachelor’s degree in engineering at the American University before continuing on to earn his Master’s in Real Estate from National University of Singapore .Mahmoud completed his MBA in Finance from his alma mater, American University of Dubai in 2010 and Master of Cities at London School of Economics and Political Science(LSE) in 2019 and DBA at Grenoble ecole de management in France in 2020. In 2022, Mahmoud finished master of International Business Law from Paris-Pantheon-Assas University in France.