IAA

Prior to joining the university in 1997, Dr. de Masi ─ over the period of more than 20 years ─ held various management positions in the US, Italy, Spain, Cyprus, the UK; and finally, Dubai with the IMPACT/BBDO advertising agency where he served as Executive Vice President/Chief Operating Officer.

Dr. de Masi holds Bachelor of Arts, Master of Arts and Master of Business Administration (Marketing) degrees, the latter two from Indiana University (Bloomington) where in the mid-seventies he was an Associate Instructor. In 1997, he was granted a Doctor of Humane Letters degree by Schiller International University.

Dr. Lance de Masi is an active speaker at major marketing communications conferences. He has served on various juries and received numerous awards.

Nassib Boueri has been Managing Director of Wunderman network in the MENA region for five years. Wunderman is a diverse digital relationship marketing network and Nassib has been instrumental in building the company to its current position as a regional leader in direct marketing.

Nassib heads a multi-cultural team of over 140 people across 7 countries with the group providing many multi-national and regional clients support in their local marketing activities. He’s personally responsible for identifying talent from across the region and for facilitating exchange of knowledge and best practices in brand building through a variety of communication platforms.

He brings high levels of enthusiasm, energy and creativity to every business endeavour and has built enduring relationships with regional as well as international clients. As a Board Member of the IAA, Nassib is part of the Talent development sub committee and the Events & Awards sub committee.

Faris is Managing Director of Interone Resonance Middle East a full service agency based in Dubai and with affiliate companies in Cairo and Jeddah.

Faris started his career in Singapore moving to Dubai in 1980 to work for PubliGraphics. In 1985 he was promoted to establish and head the branch of the same agency in Jordan.

Later, he joined the regional head office of McCann-Fortune Promoseven in Bahrain where he worked as Executive Vice President and COO for around 12 years. During this time he was instrumental in expanding the network and introducing new services, developing and applying systems and tools and creating local and international partnership agreements in the MENA region.

In 2000 he moved to Dubai with the same group to grow the operations in the UAE where he pioneered integration in what became known as the MENA’s largest single site agency.

In 2004 he moved to set up his own practice.

Faris has worked on the marketing communications for many leading brands including BMW Group, Unilever, Coca-Cola, Nivea, Loreal, Nestle, General Motors, Etisalat, Siemens, Batelco, Emaar, Nakheel, Lipton and Johnson and Johnson.

Faris holds an MBA and with the IAA UAE chapter holds the office of secretary general of the current board

Ghassan started his career in marketing in Lebanon in 1990 after graduating from the University of St Joseph in Beirut.

In 1996 he moved to Jeddah with the respected De Beers diamond group as Trade Marketing Director where he was responsible for developing business across all GCC markets.

In 1999 he was recruited by the region’s largest media sales organization, Choueiri group who, at that time, was contracted to manage Tihama for Advertising and Public Relations, a Saudi company quoted on the Saudi stock exchange. Ghassan held the position of GM Media division for three years and was involved in restructuring the company.

In 2002 Ghassan moved to Dubai to head Middle East Media Services (MEMS) a Choueiri group company, specializing in the sale and promotion of advertising space through key media.

In his current role as Managing Director of MEMS, he is responsible for the media sales and placement across a number of vehicles including Dubai TV, Sama Dubai, Dubai One and Dubai Sports Channel as well as three magazine titles and a network of outdoor signs. He heads a team of 75 located across seven cities.

In nearly 30 years working in the GCC Barry Gray has held a number of senior marketing positions.

For ten years he was responsible for the marketing of the world-leading FMCG brands distributed by Spinneys (and Spinneys associate companies) in Oman, UAE and Kuwait. From 1990 until 1994 he was CEO of the MMI companies in Abu Dhabi and Kuwait before taking up a role with international design and marketing services group, 3Di.

Since 1997, Barry has been responsible for developing Gulf Marketing Review (GMR) into the region’s leading multi-platform marketing business resource. In addition to the printed magazine he has initiated GMR-Online, an Internet-based marketing portal, the annual Gulf Marketing Forum, now in its seventh year, and an established series of advanced marketing masterclasses all aimed at progressing GMR’s objective to help promote best practice in marketing across the GCC.

Barry has written and edited a number of business publications and is a frequent media commentator on marketing-related topics.

As a Board Member of the IAA, Barry is responsible for membership strategy in addition to which he is also a board member of BPA (the Bureau of Publishing Agencies) and the Chief Marketing Officer’s Council in the UAE.