Dr. Saeeda Jaffar

Dr. Saeeda Jaffar currently serves as Senior Vice President and Group Country Manager for the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region. In this role, Dr. Jaffar and her team are focused on driving Visa’s business growth in the region with key clients and partners from financial institutions, partners, and governments in support of Visa’s mission to help individuals, businesses, and economies to thrive. With digitization high on the regional agenda, Dr. Jaffar and her team are committed to making Visa a partner of choice, while unlocking growth opportunities for new and existing clients and partners across the GCC. 

Dr. Jaffar’s leadership and expertise of 20 years have enabled her to expertly deliver pragmatic and practical solutions to strategic issues, drive bottom-line impact, and achieve rapid results. Dr. Jaffar also currently serves as a Member of the Board of Trustees at Kuwait University. She has previously served as a non-executive board member at United Arab Bank and Ishraq, a hospitality company. She has also served as an Advisory Board Member at the Bahrain Fintech Bay.

Over her career, Dr. Jaffar has worked in the Middle East, Europe, and the U.S. on a wide range of strategic, M&A and performance-related issues with clients across a range of industries, while specializing in financial services including universal banks, private banks, investment banks, private equity firms, sovereign wealth funds, government institutions and family-owned businesses.

Prior to joining Visa Inc, Dr. Jaffar was the Managing Director at Alvarez & Marsal ME, the world’s leading turnaround and restructuring firm and held leadership positions at McKinsey & Company as well as Bain & Company, serving clients across the U.S., Europe and the GCC.

Dr. Jaffar is an Emirati national and earned a Bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering from Boston University, where she was the valedictorian. She earned a Master’s degree and a Doctorate in chemical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).