NEOM’s Global Advisory Board (NEOM Consultants)

The members of the Advisory Board come from backgrounds in urban planning, architecture, design, technology, sustainability, energy and manufacturing. Those members have previously been engaged with NEOM in a meeting held in New York, USA in August 2018 to review NEOM’s strategy and discuss updates on the project.

Each of the consultants has been carefully chosen for their expertise and has demonstrated relevant experience, a global business background, familiarity with large-scale projects, senior board-level roles, international influence and enthusiasm for the aims of NEOM.
The members of the Advisory Board are:

Alexandra Cousteau

Senior Advisor to Oceana. Cousteau is an expert in environmental issues and is currently a National Geographic Emerging Explorer, filmmaker and global oceans expert.

Andrew Liveris

Former Chairman and CEO of Dow Chemical and Executive Chairman of DowDuPont. Liveris ran Dow, a producer and marketer of chemical, materials, plastics and speciality chemicals for over 14 years and was responsible for transforming Dow and DuPont into the largest chemical company in the world. He has advised two U.S. presidents, written a seminal book on the criticality of manufacturing to economic development and is on the boards of Saudi Aramco, WorleyParsons and IBM, and an advisor to the Public Investment
Fund of Saudi Arabia.

Carlo Ratti

Professor of Urban Technologies and Planning Director at MIT’s Senseable City Lab. Ratti is an architect and engineer by training and currently teaches at MIT. He has coauthored over 500 publications and patents.

Dan Doctoroff

Founder and CEO of Sidewalk Labs. Before taking over Sidewalk Labs, Doctoroff was President and CEO of Bloomberg L.P., with previous roles including Deputy Mayor for Economic Development and Rebuilding in New York and Managing Partner of Oak Hill Capital Partners. He serves on the boards of the University of Chicago, World Resources Institute, the U.S. Olympic Committee, Bloomberg Philanthropies and Human Rights First. He also helped found several charitable organizations.

Ernest J. Moniz

President and CEO of the Energy Futures Initiative. Moniz served as the 13th United States Secretary of Energy from 2013 to January 2017. He is the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems emeritus and Special Advisor to the MIT President. Dr Moniz is CEO of the Nuclear Threat Initiative and of the Energy Futures Initiative and the inaugural Distinguished Fellow of the Emerson Collective.

Jean Fréchet

Distinguished Professor of Chemistry. Fréchet is a Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley and Vice President for Research at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia. He is a leader in developing strategies and managing resources to support interdisciplinary, collaborative research bridging science and engineering. Professor Fréchet is the author of over 800 publications with more than 106,000 citations and 200 patents.

John Rossant

Founder and Chairman at the NewCities Foundation. Rossant founded the NewCities Foundation in 2010 with an aim to shape the future of urban projects. He was previously responsible for the production of global forums, such as the e-G8 in Paris and the World Economic Forum in Davos and is also the CEO and Chief Curator of LA CoMotion, the annual conference and event on future mobility. He is a board member of the Foundation Tocqueville in Paris and Humanity in Action in New York.

Lord Norman Foster

Founder and Executive Chairman of Foster + Partners. Foster + Partners is a global studio for architecture, urbanism and design. Notable projects include Reichstag in Berlin, the Great Court of British Museum, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Headquarters of Apple, Bloomberg and Comcast and airports in Hong Kong and Beijing. He is also the President of the Norman Foster Foundation.

Marc Andreessen

Co-Founder and General Partner of Andreessen Horowitz. Andreessen is a pioneer in the tech world. He founded software companies like Opsware, Mosaic, Netscape and Ning. Andreessen sits on the board of directors of Facebook, eBay and Hewlett Packard Enterprise among others. Andreessen was one of six inductees in the World Wide Web Hall of Fame announced at the First International Conference on the World-Wide Web in 1994.

Marc Raibert

Founder and CEO of Boston Dynamics. Raibert leads the development of some of the world’s most advanced robots. Before founding Boston Dynamics in 1992, he was a professor at MIT and Carnegie Mellon University and is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering.

Masayoshi Son

Chairman and CEO of SoftBank Group Corp. Son founded SoftBank, a global technology company that aspires to drive the Information Revolution in 1981 and has expanded its business to cover a range of technologies, including telecommunications, AI, smart robotics, IoT and clean energy. In 2017, SoftBank announced the first major close of the SoftBank Vision Fund to support the transformational companies at the forefront of the Information Revolution.

Neelie Kroes

Former Vice President of the European Commission. Neelie is a former EU Commissioner, the first term as EU Commissioner for Competition Policy and the second term as Commissioner in charge of the Digital Agenda for Europe. In the last term, she was also Vice President of the European Commission. Before that, Neelie Kroes was Minister for Transport, Public Works and Telecommunication in the Netherlands. Currently, she serves on various
international company boards.

Peter R. Voser

Chairman of ABB Group. Before taking up his position as Chairman of the Board of technology giant ABB, Voser served as CEO at Shell, amongst other positions with the company. He currently serves as a board member at Roche, IBM and Temasek, as well as several non-profit organizations.

Rob Speyer

President and CEO of Tishman Speyer. Speyer has grown Tishman Speyer into a leading global real estate company with $50 billion in assets. He is the Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City, and in 2013 became the youngest-ever Chairman of the Real Estate Board of New York. He currently serves on the advisory council of EXOR as well as several charitable ventures.

Sam Altman

President of YC Group and Co-Chairman of Open AI. Altman is an American entrepreneur, investor, programmer and blogger. He was named the top investor under 30 by Forbes in 2015 and one of the “Best Young Entrepreneurs in Technology” by Businessweek in 2008. Altman is also the Chairman of two energy companies, Helion and Oklo.

Tim Brown

CEO and President of IDEO. IDEO focuses on the value of design thinking to business people and designers. Brown discusses this around the world, including at the World Economic Forum in Davos and through TED Talks. He is an industrial designer by training and has earned numerous design awards, as well as advising senior business leaders.

Timothy Collins

Founder and CEO of Ripplewood Advisors, L.L.C. Collins founded investment firm Ripplewood in 1995, with previous experience at Onex Corporation, Lazard Freres & Company, Booz Allen Hamilton and Cummins Engine Company. He has served on a number of corporate boards and is currently Chairman of the Yale SOM Advisory Board.

Travis Kalanick

CEO of City Storage Systems, a holding company focused on redeveloping real estate assets to fuel urban job creation and neighbourhood rejuvenation. Kalanick is also Co-Founder and former CEO of Uber. During his seven years leading Uber, the company grew to operate in more than 70 countries, employed over 15,000 people and provided 3 million drivers with flexible work opportunities to complete over 5 billion rider-trips. Prior to Uber, he founded Red Swoosh, a networking software company.