Sumaya Sharaf Joins the Professional PhD in Business Research Program
Monarch Switzerland is pleased to welcome Ms. Sumaya Sharaf as a candidate in the Professional PhD in Business Research program, bringing with her a distinguished career in facilities management, operational risk, and health and safety leadership across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
Based in Dubai, Ms. Sharaf currently serves as Facilities Management and Health & Safety Manager at HSBC, where she oversees critical operational risk domains across multiple jurisdictions, including the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, and Algeria. Her role spans the strategic management of Health and Safety (H&S) and Building Unavailability (BU) risks, coordination with senior country leadership, and alignment with global corporate standards.
Her work is situated at the intersection of risk governance, operational resilience, and sustainability, where she collaborates closely with regional and global stakeholders to ensure compliance, enhance infrastructure performance, and implement forward-looking initiatives in facilities management. This includes the development of training frameworks, oversight of supplier performance, and the integration of sustainability practices across diverse operational environments .
Prior to her current role, Ms. Sharaf held the position of Supplier Manager – Facilities Management at HSBC, where she was responsible for vendor governance, performance monitoring, and regulatory compliance across MENA operations. Her early career at Emirates Global Aluminium further developed her expertise in procurement, contract negotiation, and supply chain strategy, forming a strong operational foundation for her later leadership roles.
Ms. Sharaf holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Northampton and a Bachelor of Business Administration from the American University of Sharjah. She also holds the NEBOSH International Diploma in Occupational Health and Safety and is a WELL Accredited Professional (WELL AP), reflecting her commitment to advancing health, safety, and environmental standards within the built environment.
Her acceptance into the Professional PhD program reflects both her academic preparedness and her extensive professional experience in complex, multi-country operational environments. At Monarch, she will further develop her research capabilities with a focus on applied organizational challenges, particularly in the areas of risk management, sustainability, and workplace health and safety.
A Practitioner Advancing into Research
Ms. Sumaya Sharaf’s progression into doctoral study reflects a deliberate and intellectually grounded transition from operational leadership to scholarly inquiry. With extensive experience managing Health and Safety (H&S) and facilities-related risk across the MENA region at HSBC, her professional work has consistently engaged with complex, multi-layered organisational realities: where regulatory compliance, human behavior, and operational systems intersect.
This depth of experience provides a strong foundation for doctoral research, particularly within Monarch’s qualitative and phenomenologically oriented framework. Rather than approaching research as an abstract or purely theoretical exercise, Ms. Sharaf is positioned to draw directly from her lived professional context, engaging with the realities of how risk frameworks are interpreted, implemented, and experienced across diverse organisational and cultural environments.
Her transition into research is therefore not a departure from practice, but an extension and elevation of it. Through the PhD journey, she will critically examine the underlying dynamics of organisational safety, operational resilience, and sustainability, with the aim of uncovering insights that move beyond procedural compliance toward a deeper understanding of how such systems function in practice.
In this respect, her work aligns closely with Monarch’s emphasis on research that is both meaningful and practicable, research that does not merely describe systems, but seeks to understand their impact on the individuals and stakeholders who operate within them. Her professional exposure to cross-border operations, stakeholder coordination, and risk governance provides a rich empirical context from which to explore these questions in a rigorous and academically grounded manner.
As she advances through the doctoral program, Ms. Sharaf is well positioned to contribute to the development of practice-informed scholarship, bridging the gap between organisational realities and academic insight. Her research has the potential to inform more nuanced approaches to health and safety management, particularly in complex, multi-jurisdictional environments where standardised frameworks must be interpreted through localised human and organisational contexts.
The Monarch Professional PhD in Business Research Proram
Monarch’s PhD in Business Research program provides a structured and intellectually rigorous pathway for experienced professionals, executives, and domain specialists who seek to advance their practical expertise into the realm of doctoral-level inquiry. Designed for individuals operating within complex organisational environments, the program enables professionals such as Ms. Sumaya Sharaf to critically examine real-world challenges in areas such as operational risk, sustainability, and organisational governance through disciplined research grounded in lived experience.
Rather than positioning theory as detached from practice, the PhD framework at Monarch invites candidates to draw directly from their professional context and elevate these experiences into meaningful research contributions. This approach reflects the institution’s commitment to qualitative inquiry, where the objective is not merely to measure phenomena, but to understand the underlying meanings, interpretations, and human dynamics that shape organisational outcomes.
The program places particular emphasis on the development of research that is both contextually grounded and practically relevant, enabling candidates to explore how policies, systems, and strategic decisions are experienced and enacted across diverse organisational and cultural settings. In doing so, doctoral research becomes a vehicle for uncovering insights that extend beyond technical compliance to address the broader human and ethical dimensions of business practice.
Aligned with the principles of the European Qualifications Framework (EQF Level 8), the PhD in Business Research reflects the highest level of academic achievement in terms of knowledge creation, autonomy, and professional impact. Candidates are expected to demonstrate originality in their research, contribute to scholarly discourse, and generate insights that are both academically robust and applicable within their respective fields.
The tuition-based and flexible structure of the program is designed to support active professionals who wish to pursue doctoral studies without disengaging from their ongoing roles. In this respect, the PhD functions not merely as an academic qualification, but as an integrative research platform, one that enables candidates to refine their professional perspective, deepen their analytical capabilities, and contribute to principled, practice-oriented scholarship grounded in real-world experience.