Tabreed, the UAE’s leading district cooling provider, today announced that its Board of Directors has appointed Nadia Bardawil as the company’s new Chief Legal Counsel and Philippe Coquelle as Chief Development Officer, both with effect from 1 May 2023.
Bardawil succeeds Hamish Joost, Tabreed’s previous Chief Legal Counsel, and her appointment means she is the first female member of Tabreed’s Executive Management Team, while Coquelle takes over from Francois-Xavier Boul, who joined as the company’s Chief Development Officer in September 2017.
Tabreed’s Chief Executive Officer, Khalid Abdullah Al Marzooqi, said the appointments were extremely important for the company, as it forges ahead in a new era of diversity and sustainability. “This is a company built on operational excellence and, as such, it is vital that our Executive Management Team is diverse, like the rest of our people who make Tabreed such a success. So, it is a privilege to be able to welcome Nadia Bardawil as our first female C-Level Officer – her breadth of experience will benefit us enormously and this appointment proves that gender is no barrier to success within progressive and inclusive companies such as this.
“Philippe Coquelle will also be a huge asset to Tabreed as we establish the company’s presence in new, international markets while growing the portfolio in existing territories. His predecessor, Francois-Xavier Boul, was highly instrumental in the exceptional growth Tabreed has seen in the past six years, so while Philippe has big shoes to fill, he is also joining us at a time when we’re really getting into our stride, with new opportunities constantly opening up. I speak for everyone in the company when I wish Nadia and Philippe all the very best in their new roles and thank their predecessors for their tireless dedication, without which Tabreed would not be the company it is today.”
Bardawil is a senior lawyer who has spent more than fifteen years working on the development and financing of energy and infrastructure projects in MENA and Europe. She spent 12 years at global law firm Shearman & Sterling LLP before joining Masdar as General Counsel, where she won numerous awards for leadership and promotion of diversity and inclusion and was named as a Chambers GC Influencer on their 2019 UAE list. Her most recent role was Senior Legal Advisor to Mubadala, where she was responsible for managing some of the group’s largest global assets.
Coquelle joins Tabreed from ENGIE, where he has performed numerous roles in Project Management, Business Development, Project Finance and Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) worldwide since joining in 2001, most recently as Corporate M&A Director at the Group’s Paris headquarters. For more than 20 years he has operated within the international energy sector, having worked in Paris, London, Brussels, Panama and Dubai. He spent four years in the UAE between 2014 and 2018, focusing on the development and project financing of power and water infrastructure across the Middle East, is fluent in French, Spanish and English, and has a Master in Energy and Environment from University of Brussels (Brussels, Belgium), and a Master in Finance from the London Business School (London, UK).
