Desiree Sayde

Desiree Sayde is the Senior Vice President – Legal and Compliance at Majid Al Futtaim Retail. She brings 26 years’ of experience leading projects and teams in legal, contracts, compliance, and governance across complex matrixed organisations . Her team manage legal and compliance risks and minimise liability exposure for Majid Al Futtaim Retail businesses while enabling sustainable growth.

Before joining Majid Al Futtaim Retail, Desiree was the Group Investigations Director at Petrofac Ltd. where she was responsible for the governance and management of their Investigation Management System and Framework. Before that, she served as the General Counsel for Supply Chain & Procurement in Unilever’s MEA, Turkey, CIS and GCC region where she lead the regulatory excellence project, regulatory early warning system, the legal framework for the Grow Africa initiative and the set up and operationalizing of Unilever’s largest HPC factory in the region. Prior to this, Desiree served as Chief Compliance Officer for GE’s Global Growth Organization in the MENAT region, Legal Lead for GE’s energy management business and as Regional Counsel with Schlumberger Ltd.

Desiree holds a Bachelor of Law from Saint Joseph University in Lebanon and various certifications from Harvard, Cornell and INSEAD in the areas of governance, compliance and leadership.