Ibrahim Elsharkawy

General Manager at Arabian Academy

Speaker

Ibrahim Elsharkawy is a learning and organisational development executive with more than 15 years building high-impact training ecosystems across retail, government, and defense sectors in the Middle East, a career defined by moving learning out of the back office and turning it into a source of revenue and real employment.

His defining work is Arabian Academy. Brought in to lead learning inside Arabian Oud, the region's foremost luxury fragrance house, Ibrahim went beyond running the function and spun it out into a standalone, fully accredited, revenue-generating institution. Within its first year it trained 1,100 Saudi job seekers and placed 800 of them into verified employment, a 73% placement rate.

Ibrahim built it from the ground up: chemical labs, computer labs, classrooms, and a live operating retail store, all wrapped in a custom, AI-powered learning platform. He secured accreditation from both TVTC and NELC, along with HRDF's "Train to Hire" status, allowing Saudis to enroll at no cost.

What sets him apart is fluency in two languages at once: the craft of instructional design, competency frameworks, performance analytics, and LMS architecture, and the boardroom dialect of revenue, ROI, attrition, and frontline performance. That combination earned Ibrahim Elsharkawy Egypt's Presidential Labor Medal in 2025, the first national honored for professional achievement abroad, and a place among Saudi Arabia's Top 50 HR Leaders.