The senior practitioners who decide who walks the Arabian stage — and the safeguards that keep their independence beyond question.
The Arabian Best of Best Awards jury is the single most important element of our entire program. It is the reason our laurel carries genuine weight inside each industry we recognize, and the reason our recognitions are taken seriously across regional and international business circles.
Our current jury panel comprises more than 40 senior practitioners drawn from across the GCC and beyond — former CEOs, sector specialists, regulatory veterans, and academic experts. Below is a curated profile of our council-level jurors. Sub-industry jurors are listed on the relevant category pages.
Selection to the Arabian Awards jury is by invitation only. Candidates are identified through a combination of industry research, peer nominations from existing jurors, and our council's internal recommendations. Every candidate must meet four core criteria:
Once invited, jurors serve for a renewable two-year term. Rotation is mandatory after four consecutive years to prevent capture and ensure fresh perspectives enter the panel regularly.
The Arabian Awards jury operates under strict independence safeguards designed and audited internally each cycle:
Jurors do not interact with sponsors during evaluation rounds. Sponsorship logistics are handled by a separate commercial team that has no input into jury decisions and no access to jury rosters or scoring data.
Within each category, jurors score nominations independently without seeing other jurors' scores. Aggregation happens only after all individual scores are submitted. This prevents anchoring effects and ensures every juror's view contributes equally to the outcome.
Jurors with any direct commercial relationship to a nominee — board seats, equity holdings, current or recent consulting engagements, family relationships — are formally recused from that category's evaluation. The recusal is logged and a backup juror from the same industry pool steps in.
Every juror is paid an honorarium for their time. This ensures we attract genuinely senior practitioners who would otherwise have no commercial incentive to participate, and removes any temptation to short-cut the evaluation work.
No juror serves more than four consecutive years on any single industry sub-jury. Rotation is enforced regardless of performance or sponsor preference.
Every juror evaluates nominations against our five-pillar framework: Market Impact (25%), Innovation (20%), Financial Sustainability (20%), Operational Excellence (20%), and Category-Specific Criteria (15%). Specific sub-criteria vary by industry but the overall structure is consistent across the program. Full details of the framework are available on our Selection Process page.
Beyond the council, every industry vertical has its own sub-jury of 3-5 specialist practitioners. These sub-juries are listed on each industry page:
The same structure exists for all twenty industries we recognize. View all categories for the full sector list.
The Arabian Awards is selective about jury growth — we currently add only 4-6 new jurors per year. If you are a senior practitioner with 15+ years in a sector we cover, and you would like to be considered for future jury rotation, please contact our team with a brief CV and a note on the sector you would be best positioned to evaluate. We respond to every credible inquiry, though most candidates spend 12-24 months on our consideration list before invitation.
The Arabian Best of Best Awards is committed to transparent jury practice. We publish jury member biographies, disclose our evaluation framework, and provide written feedback to any shortlisted candidate who requests it. We will also confirm in writing — to any participant, sponsor, or partner — that sponsorship has no influence on jury outcomes. This commitment is non-negotiable; the moment it slips, the entire value of our laurel collapses, and our council operates accordingly.
"Independence isn't a marketing claim. It's an operating discipline we enforce against ourselves every cycle." — Arabian Awards Council Chair
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