Cherif Sleiman

Chief Revenue Officer • Tech-Driven Leader • AI & Emerging Technology Evangelist • Helping Organisations Win at the Intersection of Leadership & Innovation | Speaker | Writer

United Arab Emirates

About

I’ve spent 30 years sitting at three tables — the technology table, the revenue table and the leadership table. Most people only sit at two. My career started in computer science and systems architecture. I was fascinated by how technology worked. But over time, I became equally fascinated by something harder to engineer: how to lead people, build organizations, and make technology actually serve business at scale. From Nortel to Cisco to Infoblox to Property Finder - across 60+ countries and 30 years - I’ve led commercial organizations through technological disruption, market expansion, and some of the most significant shifts in how businesses operates. That experience has given me a lens I find increasingly rare: technical depth combined with commercial breadth. Today, AI is the defining question for every leader. Not the technical question of how it works, but the human question of how to lead through it, build teams around it, and use it wisely. That is what I think about, write about, and talk about. If you’re thinking about the future of leadership, technology, and what it takes to build organizations that thrive in an AI-accelerated world — follow along.

Experience

  • Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) at Property Finder
    Jun 2022 - Present · 4 yrs 2 mos

    Transformational leadership of every aspect of the organization including Sales, Product, and Marketing. - Built sales consultancy and B2B marketing functions with proper customer segmentation including a modern lead generation engine. - Introduced new products focused on user journeys - Re-built cross functional business processes across sales, marketing, product and finance around customer life cycle management. - Results include 300% increase in ARR, 4x increase in EBITDA and 1 Billion dollars in value creation in three years.

  • Chief Revenue Officer at Safe Security
    Aug 2021 - Jun 2022 · 11 mos

    Transformational Assignment to prove that Cyber Risk Quantification (CRQ) is Problem worth solving for Safe as a startup: - Hired first team on the ground in London, Dubai & Singapore - Signed strategic partnerships and global SIs - Helped with Product strategy - Closed initial Enterprise deals Scaled from 0 to 3M ARR winning few key Enterprise Logos.

  • Infoblox (7 yrs 8 mos)
    • Senior Vice President and General Manager International Business
      May 2018 - Aug 2021 · 3 yrs 4 mos

      - Manage all aspects of International Business including EMEA and Asia Pacific (everything outside North America) with full P&L for 3 continents, 60 countries, 400 people, 20 languages, and 15 time zones - Led Sales, Field Eng, inside sales, Operations, Field Marketing, Professional Services, Customer Support, Enablement, etc. - Completed APJ business Transformation - Achieved significant sustained growt - Grew business 4x in 3 years. Overall International Business at Infoblox grew from 10% to 49.2% of global revenue contributing significantly to the 3B USD of value creation.

    • Vice President and General Manager - Europe, Middle East and Africa
      Jan 2014 - May 2018 · 4 yrs 5 mos

      - Managed all aspects of business for Europe, Middle East and Africa. Full P&L responsibilities. - Led an organization of over 300 people over 30 countries, 10 languages, 7 time zones. - Grew business 6x in 3 years.

  • General Manager Saudi Arabia at Brocade
    Dec 2012 - Jan 2014 · 1 yr 2 mos

    18 months assignment to establish Saudi operations. - Lead all aspect of sales and channel operations for Service Provider and Enterprise for Brocade as a start up in Saudi. - Setup legal entity and hired initial team. - Established Brocade as a key player in Enterprise data center market - Grew Business from 300K to 7M USD

  • Cisco Systems ()
    • Managing Director - Enterprise Line of Business
      Aug 2008 - Dec 2012 · 4 yrs 5 mos

      Sales Leader for the Enterprise LOB for Middle East and Africa with direct focus on transforming the financial, real-estate, energy, and Aviation (Airlines and Airports) verticals. Major success in developing customer executive relationships. Established Strategic partnerships with global SIs and Consulting companies such as PwC, Accenture, Deloitte, Orange, BT, etc and developed and executed joint GTM initiatives. Grew business 100M - 280M.

    • Director - Head of Advanced Technologies
      Dec 2006 - Dec 2012 · 6 yrs 1 mo

      Sales Leader for new and emerging technologies at Cisco into Service Provider and Enterprise in MEA Region. Portfolio included Data Center, L4-7, Unified Communications, Video and Storage. Start up mentality and hand to hand combat approach from recruiting high performing sales & pre-sales to fighting for every deal against more established competitors. Major success scored in increasing customer relevance. Grew Business from 120M to 800M USD.