Dr. Raf Fatani oversees Amazon Alexa programs and strategies in the MENA region. With over 15 years of experience leading teams in global tech firms, Dr. Fatani was previously Amazon’s head of public policy for its retail and cloud businesses in the MENA region and Turkey, and was part of the core Amazon team that worked on the acquisition of the e-commerce business Souq. Prior to Amazon, he consulted for Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Dell and other tech, telecom, and satellite firms. He’s also supported numerous non-governmental organizations, and worked for the U.N.’s Internet Governance Forum in Geneva.
Dr. Fatani is widely published, and served on the advisory committee to the board of directors at ICANN, the body responsible for coordinating the technical management of the internet. He taught politics at the University of Exeter in the UK, from which he holds a multidisciplinary Ph.D. on global internet policy challenges and associated stakeholder stances, an M.A. in international affairs, and a BSc. in internet engineering.