GCBR Expert

James Drury

GCBR role:

Member, GCBR Expert Network

Job title:

COO, CAIO, Founder

Organisation:

ME Digital Group, Cobone, Outriders.ai

Based in:

United Arab Emirates

Geographic focus:

Middle East

Languages: English

For the past decade I have operated in highly volatile markets across the Middle East, leading digital marketplace businesses through repeated waves of disruption. Covid demand collapse forced us to let go around 40% of the workforce. We had to batten down cost, reallocate scarce cash and people, and protect the core of the business. It took two years to recover, but we came out profitable and growing again. That period shaped how I now think about resilience, it has to be designed and run into the machine every day. Since then I have led the same portfolio through sharp demand swings, intense competition, and shifting regulatory expectations, operating digital marketplaces in tourism exposed GCC economies where demand swings fast and building operating models that hold up when tourism, logistics, and regulation all move at once. In practice that has meant restructuring teams, redesigning operating models, tightening handoffs, and building reporting that gives leadership an earlier view of both risk and opportunity. A large part of my work is keeping strategy, incentives, and execution aligned. At the same time, AI tools started flooding into the business faster than the operating model could absorb them, so my job became turning that “AI shock” into a structured, resilience focused change program. As Chief AI Officer I now run AI as a resilience capability; we map critical workflows, identify where automation and decision support can create leverage, and put simple governance around it so leaders can trust the output. In KSA, regulatory and tax changes, including VAT moving to 15 percent and the e-invoicing rollout, forced us to rethink pricing logic, merchant economics, and compliance processes across the marketplace in a compressed window, while keeping the customer experience stable. Alongside my executive role I founded an AI transformation firm that helps leadership embed AI safely across their organizations. The work ranges from building early warning reporting to installing lightweight AI enhanced operating that link risk, performance, and action. The common thread is practicality, everything has to be usable by non-technical leaders under time pressure. As a newly Certified Chair with the Advisory Board Centre, I am bringing more structured advisory thinking into this work. I am interested in how independent challenge, clearer governance, and better use of data can improve decision making and resilience at the board table. That includes sharpening decision rights, aligning management information with risk, and ensuring that advisory boards keep long term value on the agenda even when the environment feels unstable in the short term. My value to organizations, I help them turn big ideas about “AI” or “resilience” into concrete practices that show up in workflows, KPIs, and board reporting. I bring the experience of a sitting COO who has lived through crisis and recovery, the discipline of an AI transformation leader who knows how to operationalize technology, and the perspective of a Certified Chair who understands board level governance. A typical brief that fits my strengths sounds like this... We are a roughly fifty million dollar digital marketplace. Problem is risk lives in silos, each team has its own plans and data. Problem is our AI experiments sit on top of fragile processes and legacy systems. Problem is in a crisis everything escalates to the CEO and decision rights are unclear. We want you to map our critical value streams and install playbooks for our top ten risks. We want you to turn AI from scattered experiments into a focused resilience company enhancer. We want you to reset roles, decision rights, and incentives so people know how to act under pressure.

Member of the GCBR Expert Network · Business Resilience Research · Paris Resilience Summit