Louise Broekman, founding director of the Advisory Board Centre/Image: Supplied
Across the Gulf, a quiet governance revolution is taking shape. Family businesses, sovereign investment entities, and corporates are rapidly adopting advisory board frameworks to bring transparency, accountability, and strategic clarity to decision-making. According to Louise Broekman, founding director of the Advisory Board Centre, the pace of this transformation is faster in the GCC than anywhere else.
“While Europe has a long history of advisory boards, they are now gaining significant traction in the GCC,” Broekman said. “The GCC is a region with enormous ambition for the future, and big projects require big thinking. Advisory boards will be a continual mechanism for supporting the region in reaching that ambition because they harness a global mindset – they allow projects or policy intent to tap into dynamic, diverse thinking and experience.”
With the Gulf attracting global wealth and institutional investment, particularly in government-owned entities and family offices, Broekman said the need for structured external advice has become essential. “Wherever there’s a lot of drive, advisory boards can play an effective supporting function,” she added.
Dubai’s emergence as a governance and innovation hub
Broekman sees Dubai at the epicentre of this regional shift. “Dubai is a global hub in international business, with a high population of educated advisory board professionals and key initiatives (such as the DIFC), which collectively instil confidence in investment in the region and trust in good governance,” she said.
For her, the emirate’s light-touch regulatory environment is an advantage. “You can’t harness innovation if you’re making decisions the way you’ve always done — advisory boards and advisory constructs enable transparency around the decision-making process. The UAE is not overburdened by regulation, and this translates to faster-adapting integrated governance systems, where leaders are demonstrating agile approaches to being informed.”
In family businesses — long reliant on informal networks and trusted advisers — the shift to structured advisory ecosystems is accelerating. “The Global Research Council’s 12-month study on advisory boards in families in business found that one of the key drivers is good stewardship, including succession planning and protecting legacy,” Broekman said.
“As generations change and families become complex, there’s a need for governance frameworks to become more transparent, coupled with an increase in responsibility when it comes to due process around the way decisions are being made,” she explained.
Broekman noted that advisory boards are also helping families manage emerging risks. “The shift toward structured advisory board ecosystems is not just about ‘traditional advice’, it’s also in reaction to a need for organisations to deal with the ‘known unknowns’ including digital, cyber and geopolitical risks, to name a few.”
From insight to trust: why institutional investors rely on advisory boards
The use of advisory boards has become a hallmark of credible corporate governance, particularly when engaging with sovereign funds and private equity. “Advisory boards inform better, more confident decision-making,” Broekman said.
She pointed to a recent example: “The Advisory Board Centre is currently supporting a large, private-equity funded company, and they already have expansive understanding of financial management, but are looking to address broader industry issues and are therefore using advisory boards to tap into private market experience, domain expertise and a fresh lens on value drivers.”
This, she said, allows organisations to “see blind spots, avoid mistakes, fill gaps in skills and experience, identify new avenues and accelerate results through confident decision-making. At the end of the day it’s about accessing trusted external expertise — people they don’t already have sitting around the table.”
Globally, advisory boards are evolving — and the GCC is leading some of that change. “Professionals in the region are fast adopting best practice advisory boards into their portfolio of work,” Broekman said. “It’s clear they are hungry for a modern approach to governance and seek a practical way to apply it.”
She highlighted that the region leads the world in participation in the Certified Chair Executive Program, the Advisory Board Centre’s flagship credential. “It sells out in the region faster than anywhere else in the world,” she said.
“Best practice is underpinned by principles and ethical frameworks around how advice is provided and consumed, so it puts the region in good stead for quality, well-informed decision-making by leaders. This is why we’re bringing the Megatrends Summit to Dubai in November — to really explore the potential of the region.”
Government strategies in the UAE and Saudi Arabia are also shaping the advisory ecosystem. “Because of the scale of the policy ambition in the region, organisations are looking for the finest advisory expertise globally — because they are doing things they have never done before,” Broekman said.
She cited Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 as a prime example. “There’s wide-reaching ambition across water, housing, education policy, to name a few. The university sector is a pivotal moment for the region, whereby universities are mandated to have global thought leadership advisory boards… an indication of the strategic imperative to embed a global mindset for the future.”
Such frameworks, she added, enable countries to shape governance on their own terms. “It means they are able to control decision-making in their own market (which acts both as an innovation lens and a protective mechanism) in an ever-changing global market. It becomes a strength in the way governance is formed in the region.”
Broekman believes the GCC’s open-mindedness is helping it leapfrog mature governance markets. “Modern governance is being challenged in different ways: over- and under-regulation. In mature governance markets, strong overregulation places constraints on governance boards, where risk and compliance flood the agenda and lead to a conservative mindset,” she said.
“By contrast, underregulated environments like Saudi Arabia are in many ways better positioned to build smart, tech-driven governance systems from the ground up.”
The next decade: embedding governance in transformation
Looking ahead, Broekman said the GCC’s governance evolution will continue to parallel its economic diversification. “The GCC has a unique opportunity to adopt technology swiftly and adapt to a modern governance approach faster than other hubs,” she noted. “With the region pursuing bold initiatives where others lag — spanning infrastructure, communities, international trade, and more — the next decade will see advisory boards and governance frameworks evolve hand in hand with the region’s strategic goals.”
For Broekman, the advisory board model is more than a governance trend; it is becoming a key enabler of institutional maturity. In an era defined by transformation and capital influx, the GCC’s embrace of structured advice may well become one of its most enduring competitive advantages.
