Iktimal started her career in Australian State Government Departments working in Public Policy and Corporate Governance. Since moving to Dubai in January 2007, Iktimal has focused on Talent Acquisition and Human Capital, working with leading family conglomerates as well as multinational organizations t transform their talent agenda.

For over 11 years, Iktimal led IBM’s Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) offering across the MEA region. With a particular focus on UAE, KSA, Qatar and Oman, Iktimal and her team have helped organizations develop their employee value proposition, implement new ATS and CRM systems, roll out graduate/intern/technician hiring programs and reengineered and automated recruitment processes. Her teams consistently improved candidate experience and quality of hire, significantly reduced time and cost to hire, all whilst using less than 1% agency support.

Due to her overwhelming success in operational delivery and client satisfaction, Iktimal was promoted to lead IBMs Talent Transformation Service Line for MEA which included RPO as well as HR System Implementation (Oracle HCM and SuccessFactors), Talent Development, HR Consulting, HR Outsourcing and Change Management.

Over the past three years, Iktimal successfully led several large-scale consulting projects in the UAE and KSA with a particular focus on shared services. This included the development of a business case to move shared service as well as its implementation. Iktimal has also led several programs where clients have outsourced their HR function to IBM where she drove continuous improvement and consistent SLA performance. She has also helped implement ERP systems, with her team leading the impact it will have on existing processes and employee skill and proficiency levels.