Mahmoud Al-Burai is currently serving as Senior Advisor at Real Estate Regulatory Agency of Dubai mandated to work on a plan to make Dubai more competitive. Before this role Mahmoud has served as the CEO of Dubai Real estate Institute for 10 years in which the institute graduated 80,000 real estate professionals from the region. He is also the Vice President of International real estate federation, FIABCI Arabic Countries since 2016 and sits on the board of International Real estate Federation, the world largest global real estate network of more than 1.5 million associate members. Before that he served on the board of International Real estate Society (IRES) for 5 years and the board of National Association of Realtors (NAR), 1.3 million member real estate network based in Chicago for the years 2019-2020. He served as the Chair of UN Global Compact UAE from 2015-2020 and represented MENA region in UN Global Compact advisory board for 2016-2018. In his role as UN Global Compact MENA representative led many SDG’s driven initiatives. He started youth ambassadors’ programs in seven UAE universities recruiting over 150 youth, train them to help businesses become more sustainable. He also led establishing Women empowerment principles platform in the UAE with 60 companies signing on WEPs commitment. To promote SDGs among business, Mahmoud launched SDGs pioneers UAE celebrating SDGs success stories of private and government organizations. Mahmoud has been selected to be FIABCI representative at the United Nations Economic Commission for West Asia (UNESCWA) and UNECE (Geneva). Recently Mahmoud established his Think Tank in Geneva under the name of Middle East Sustainable Development Institute to lobby governments, businesses and communities to action on SDGs in the Middle East. His mail role is to lobby private sector in the region to be actively involved in SDGs, during his presidency, UAE local network became the fastest growing network internationally. Moreover, Mahmoud leads the affordable Housing working-group at World Economic Forum. Mahmoud also serves as an advisor-MENA region at Happy City Lab, headquartered in Canada which works on integrating happiness into urban design.
Prior to his position in Dubai Real estate Institute, Mahmoud worked as Senior Director of Real estate Sector development at Real estate Regulatory Authority of Dubai and few years as a Development Associate Manager at Dubai holding. Mahmoud completed his bachelor's degree in engineering at the American University before continuing with to earn his Master's in Real Estate from National University of Singapore. Mahmoud completed his MBA in Finance from his alma mater, American University of Dubai in 2010 and Master of Cities at London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 2019 and DBA at Grenoble École de Management in France. Before this role as Vice-Chair and Global Board Member, he served as Network Leader of ARISE UAE.
