About
Melodena has three decades of experience working in senior roles with private sector, governments, academia and startups. Globe trotter, having worked, lived and studied in India, USA, Germany, Taiwan and UAE.
She is currently Professor of Innovation Management at the Mohammed Bin Rashid School of Government in Dubai. She is the author of over 175 academic publications - the most recent books are the AI-Enabled Business, AI Smart Kit and Business With Purpose: Advancing Social Enterprise.
Her areas of expertise are:
Strategic Consultancy: Innovation (policy and market development especially looking at new tech).
Crisis & Reputation Management: Managing brands and reputation (product and nation).
Corporate Training and Design Thinking Workshops: AI Ethics and Governance, Innovation, Public Value & Agile Government.
Design Thinking: Working on those intractable problems for better human-centred solutions.
Current Research Projects: Tech Governance (AI and SynBio), Anticipatory Governance, Agile Government, Corporate Diplomacy and Soft Power.
She is an IEEE SA AI Systems Ethics Committee member for the Global Initiative Education; Concentration of Power, Autonomous Weapons Systems (legal, ethics, and policy) and Planet Positive 2030. Founder and board member of nonprofit AIBMENA and Advisory Board member of SixthFactor. Working on metaverse governance with Agile Nations and Council of Europe.
Recent Events
Latest Posts
Quotes
"It is not the availability of data ...but its curation, its interpretation and the decisions being taken without an understanding of the context that are becoming a worrying trend."
“A government's purpose is to deliver public value through the social contract, this means each employee and organisation needs to understand their role and responsibilities for such an endeavour."
“The heart of innovation is problem solving. A well-defined problem has a higher likelihood of having a well-structured solution."
INNOVATION
Working in the STI ecosystem, human-centered design thinking and knowledge capacity building
Storytelling
Since 2010 capturing the organisational memories of the region via cases!
Board Member
Early stage startups, nonprofits and others.
Consulting
Strategy, Brand Architecture, Crisis Management, Design Thinking Workshops