Sana Bagersh is a communication and business consultant based in Dubai, UAE and Seattle, USA. She works as consultant in international marketing, communication strategy, innovation, entrepreneurship/ intrapreneurship, stakeholder engagement as well as community and partnership building.
Bagersh is CEO of BrandMoxie, an agency that provides branding, communication, PR, advertising, digital marketing and events management services, and that serves as strategic partner for her social impact initiatives in the Arab region, Africa and the US. As part of her social impact focus, Bagersh is managing editor of Tempo a community magazine that promotes community engagement, inclusivity, and celebrates ‘everyday people doing extraordinary things’; a short film public-good focused competition platform called The Smovies; and a sustainability platform called World For Good. In addition, Bagersh is founder of Tamakkan, a US-UAE platform focused entrepreneurship, innovation and leadership that conducts seminars, workshops, roundtables and retreats, and offers mentorship to startups and disadvantaged women and youth.
As part of her consultancy engagements, Bagersh has worked extensively across UAE government sectors. She served as Innovation and Strategy Advisor for the Abu Dhabi Municipality for three years, formulating their innovation, intrapreneurship, and stakeholder programmes. Bagersh served as comms advisor for the Higher Colleges of Technology where she developed a streamlined communication framework across its 17 colleges. She also helped design Emirates Foundation’s social entrepreneurship portal and their stakeholder engagement strategy. Bagersh currently builds engagement and thought leadership platforms focused on areas such as leadership, digital transformation, DEI/ ESG, and principled governance.
In the past year (2023/2024) she delivered programming for the Prime Minister’s Office, Emarat Petroleum, and Ma’an. Bagersh has participated extensively in business groups in the US and the UAE. She has in the past served as board member at AmCham Abu Dhabi (for four years); at different times chairing its Women in Business Committee (for two years); and concurrently its Arts and Culture Committee and its Small Business Committee (for another two years). As chair of the Women in Business committee she developed and deployed Women Achieve in 2015, a platform that promotes women’s empowerment ideals and that was subsequently signed and adopted by over 100 companies, some of them 500 Fortune entities and others UAE institutions.
Over the years Bagersh has worked closely with academia, organizing seminars with Sorbonne Abu Dhabi, NYU, INSEAD and HCT, and also serving on various industry advisory committees including the HCT’s Women’s College and Abu Dhabi Vocational Institute. She has also had a part time stint for a year as adjunct professor at Zayed University, teaching marketing (practical real-life case studies) to fourth year students. Bagersh started her career as a journalist at Gulf News in Abu Dhabi, UAE (1985 – 1990), where she was among the first Arab female journalists in the country. She then worked as bureau chief (1997-1999) of Gulf News’ Abu Dhabi office, during which time she led the news team. To help journalism capacity building she launched the neighborhood reporting scheme which trained community reporters. During her time as journalist Bagersh met leaders such as HH Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al Nahyan, Nelson Mandela, Wilfred Thesiger, Richard Branson, George Bush Sr., Kurt Waldheim, Princess Diana and Prince Charles, Kofi Annan, Yasser Arafat, Muamar al Gaddafi, Benazir Bhutto, Jacques Chirac, Richard Cohen, as well as sports and entertainment personalities. Early in her career, Bagersh moved for a stint to Seattle, Washington for seven years (1990-1997), where she worked in Decision Data, aresearch company; a Boeing integrator; and then her own business, a gourmet restaurant and catering company called Alla Italia.