STRATEGIC SESSION SPEAKERS

Aali Al-Zahrani began his career at Saudi Aramco as an engineer in Maintenance Engineering and Fault Analysis in 1991. He spent 1992 as an engineer at Abqaiq Utilities Maintenance Division and Abqaiq Plants Utilities Division.
• In 1994, Al-Zahrani was selected for an internship development assignment for 18 months working with Emersson in the USA - specialists in manufacturing electronics/control systems.
• Al-Zahrani joined the Abqaiq Plants Maintenance Services Division where he served as an engineer until 1996.
• Thereafter, he completed several assignments as an engineer before becoming an acting Supervisor of the Operations Engineering System Support Unit. He carried out Supervisor and Superintendent duties until he became the Assistant To the Vice President of Southern Area Oil Operations.
• In 2012, he became the Superintendent of Sea Water Injection Maintenance and progressed to be the Manager of Sea Water Injection and then the Manager of Abqaiq Plants Maintenance up until 2014, when he completed an acting assignment as General Manager of Public Affairs.
• In 2015, Al-Zahrani took on the role of General Manager of Industrial Security Operations and was in 2017, promoted on permanent basis.
• In 2019, Al-Zahrani was promoted to Executive Director, Safety and Industrial Security, where he is overseeing several corporate functions to promote and enable the protection of company’s assets and to provide employees with a secure and safe environment.
• In 2020, Al-Zahrani was promoted to Vice President, Safety and Industrial Security.
• In Al-Zahrani’s capacity as Safety and Industrial Security Vice President, he is the Secretary of Saudi Aramco Corporate Health, Safety, Security and Environment (HSSE) Committee which is the highest-level venue for governance of mentioned topics in Saudi Aramco as well as addressing critical corporate-level issues and improvement opportunities. The committee is chaired by the CEO with members from corporate and executive management.
• Al-Zahrani is the Champion of the Corporate Industrial Incidents’ Risks and Co-Champion of the Corporate Non-Industrial Incidents’ Risks in Saudi Aramco which are part of the Top Corporate Risks that requires corporate-level oversight. He is responsible to monitor, advice and report to corporate management on the Company’s industrial incidents’ risks exposure, effectiveness of controls, treatment strategies and their implementation status.
• Al-Zahrani has a B.S. degree in Systems Engineering from KFUPM. He also has a varied leadership and training history and participated in the Asia Business and Culture Program.
• Al-Zahrani attended the Advanced Management Program at INSEAD Business School in 2011 and he attended the Asia Business and Culture Program in China in 2012. He also attended the Saudi Aramco Management Development Seminar in Washington, D.C., and New York in 2014.
• In 2018, Al-Zahrani, attended the 40th Oxford Energy Seminar at St Catherine’s College in the UK. This seminar is widely recognized as an important international forum for government officials, industrialists, managers and other professionals involved in corporate decision making in the field of energy.
• In January 2017, ASIS International, the preeminent security society for security professionals with approximately 38,000 members in over 100 countries worldwide, selected Al-Zahrani as Senior Vice President for the Middle East Region. As such, his primary focus has been to elevate the level of competency of security practitioners through implementing professional training, development and certification programs throughout Gulf, North Africa and Southern Asia.

• In 2019, Al-Zahrani was approached to become a Vice Chairman of the Saudi National Security Services Company, which develops a security business to serve the growing security demand.

Dr. Faisal Al-Faqeer joined Sadara Chemical Company as Chief Executive Officer in October 2017, bringing with him over 23 years of experience in the oil & gas industry, having previously led different functions in within Aramco, including in Engineering Consulting Services, Research and Development, Refining and Gas Operations. He also served as a Board Member on the Sadara Board of Directors from January to September 2017, and comes to his new role with a deep understanding of the Company and its operations.
Prior to joining Sadara, Dr. Faisal served as the acting General Manager of Ras Tanura Refinery, a complex refinery with a capacity of 550 thousand barrels per day, making it the largest refinery in the Middle East. He also previously led the Engineering and Operations Departments in the Refinery, where he was responsible for the safe and reliable operation of the assets, meeting the production commitment and managing major refinery upgrades. Prior to joining Ras Tanura Refinery, he led Aramco Research and Development Center where he was responsible for establishing different research satellite centers in North America and Europe.
Dr. Faisal holds a Master’s Degree and a PhD in Materials Science & Engineering from Pennsylvania State University, and Bachelor’s Degree in Chemical Engineering from King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals.

Fahad Al-Harbi holds a Mechanical Engineering Bachelors from the University of Missouri with over 20 years of experience within Safety & Industrial Security.

Fahad’s started as a Loss Prevention project support engineer providing technical safety engineering consultations to numerous brown and green field projects throughout their design construction and commissioning phases. Through his involvement in projects, he played a key role in supporting growth and development on both Upstream and Downstream sides of business. Fahad was involved in the introduction grassroots facilities including Khursaniyah Gas Plant, Manifa Producing, Wasit Gas Plant and Shaybah NGL.

When he was appointed as a Supervisor of the Tanajib Area Producing and Pipelines Unit, Fahad oversaw Safety Management System implementation at various Saudi Aramco facilities and organizations. He was later promoted to a Loss Prevention superintendent position through which he continued to be active in driving organization safety performance. The Loss Prevention Divisions he covered include Tanajib Division, Ras Tanura Division and Abqaiq Division.

Fahad also under took several other leadership assignments such as a Maintenance Division Head in Ras Tanura Refinery, Area Loss Prevention Manager and Industrial Security Operations Manager at the Southern Area and the Western Region.

Luke Bencie serves as the Managing Director of the Washington D.C. based security consulting firm, Security Management International. The author of six books on security, Mr. Bencie has been a consultant to the U.S. Department of State, U.S. Department of Defense, Fortune 500 companies, as well as foreign governments. He has worked in over 100 countries and has trained thousands of police, intelligence, and military officers in the U.S. and abroad in the fields of counterterrorism, counterintelligence, crisis management and strategic leadership.

Prior to establishing SMI, Mr. Bencie was a senior security consultant for Raytheon Company in the
Intelligence and Information Systems Division. Mr. Bencie also previously served on the U.S. Department of State's Foreign Emergency Support Team, where he was a representative from the CIA’s Office of Special Activities. In this capacity, he was responsible for immediately responding to terrorist attacks carried out against U.S. targets overseas; subsequently serving in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and other global hotspots.

He holds graduate degrees in National Security Studies from The George Washington University and the American Military University.