About

An expert in JVs, corporate, commercial and companies’ laws, franchise agreements and compliance matters, Mona Hussein has operated in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Kuwait during the course of her career. She is currently heading the legal and compliance function at adidas Emerging Markets – a region that includes MENA, Africa, Turkey and India. She joined adidas in 2013 to set up the legal and compliance function, build a highly driven self-motivated team and a compliance oriented environment. As a trusted member of the senior management team, her daily job consists of providing strategic legal advice to management, drafting and ensuring the implementation of internal governance policies, mitigating internal and external risks, keeping abreast with new legislations and regional and international sanctions, setting up subsidiaries and the E-commerce business for the region. With her ability to ‘see around the corner’, Hussein is highly regarded for her risk mitigation abilities, ensuring she is a guardian of the business at all times. Prior to joining adidas, she worked at a major multi-functional group of companies, Majid Al Futtaim – Dubai, managing the joint venture side of the business which included retail, fashion, IT contracts, leisure and entertainment, financial facilities and a credit card joint venture company. Hussein later moved on to join one of the most prominent local law firms in the UAE, Hadef & Partners – Abu Dhabi, as a litigator, representing clients in multi-million dollar cases filed before the courts of the UAE. Having worked with different types of businesses throughout the region she has developed great business acumen which has endowed her with a vast legal portfolio and a highly responsible corporate code; there are no two ways about her ethics and integrity, with her zero tolerance policy for non-compliance a clear sign of this. In her role, she trains the organisations across the region on compliance matters including fraud, bribery and corruption, competition law and acting in compliance with the company code of conduct. Hussein is keen to contribute her knowledge to the wider in-house and general counsel community and has made appearances at roundtables and speaking engagements aimed at furthering the expertise of in-house counsel in MENA and was elected last year as a judge for the Middle East Legal Awards.