Areen Shahbari

Innovation, Strategy, and Leadership Instructor and Coach, Professional & Executive Development at Harvard Division of Continuing Education

Speaker

Areen Shahbari is a strategy advisor, executive educator, and President of Cactus International, a global training and consulting firm. She works with senior leadership teams in Fortune 500 companies, governments, and mission-driven organizations to improve decision-making, strengthen strategic clarity, and drive execution in complex, fast-changing environments shaped by artificial intelligence and disruption.

With over 23 years of experience across corporate leadership, entrepreneurship, consulting, and executive education, she helps organizations turn strategy into action and align leadership teams around high-stakes priorities. Prior to her current work, she spent a decade in the media industry as Head of Programming, television producer, and host, leading strategic content portfolios and operating in high-pressure environment requiring rapid, high-impact decision-making.

She serves as a trusted advisor to senior leaders and boards and facilitates strategy and innovation sessions across industries, shaping how leadership teams think, align, and make decisions in real time. Her work combines behavioral insight, strategic thinking, and experiential methods, including live decision scenarios and applied case-based simulations to strengthen judgment, alignment, and execution.

She teaches at Harvard DCE Professional & Executive Development and Stanford University’s Center for Global and Online Education, where she designs and delivers programs for senior leaders across industries. She has led programs for organizations including the Saudi Ministry of Economy and Planning, the Saudi Industrial Development Fund (SIDF), Salesforce, MediaTek, and The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and works with senior leaders from Apple, Nike, and Netflix on strategy, innovation, and execution.

A Fulbright Scholar and recipient of the Harvard Distinguished Teaching Performance Award, she holds an MBA from Simmons School of Business and a BA in Psychology and Communication. She is a frequent international speaker and works with executives across North America, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia-Pacific.