Team Leader, Information Security; Chief Information Security Officer, Kuwait Oil Company

Dr. Reem Al-Shammari is the information security team leader and chief information security officer at Kuwait Oil Company, where she has led significant changes to the maturity of cybersecurity in the energy sector, which is closely linked to Kuwait’s national cybersecurity posture.

She is a passionate leader whose valuable contribution to cybersecurity is recognized at national, regional, and international levels. She is one of the co-founders and board members of Women in CyberSecurity MiddleEast (WiCSME), which has approximately 900 members across the region. Having a number of academic and professional degrees, including an engineering degree, masters of business administration, PhD, and coursework through Harvard’s Business School Executives Program helps her bring a balance of technical and management skills to her current Leadership role as a chief information security officer.

She represents her country in a number of regional and global program and forums and is recognized as an innovator and wild card who continues to push the envelope to get to the most optimum outcome on an initiative or project. In addition to a number of other accolades, Dr. Reem has been ranked #1 at the IFSEC Global Top Influencers in Security & Fire 2019 and also awarded the “The Arab CISO of the Year 2019.”

She’s a very active contributor to the cybersecurity community, promoting collaboration via knowledge sharing “#StrongerTogether,” organizing various cybersecurity-related workshops, events, and meetups, as well as participating as a judge in various prestigious awards and a keynote and speaker in various national, regional, and international forums. She is also a member in the World Economic Forum’s Program  on cyber resilience in Oil and Gas. She presented a TEDx talk in November 2020 under the title “Let your passion lead the way,” which is now available on TEDx channels. She strongly believes that when any woman rises, all women rise together.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Sign up to receive our weekly DirectCurrent newsletter to stay up to date on the program’s work.



  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.