Overview
Maliha Jilani is a partner in Heidrick & Struggles’ Dubai office. She leads the Social Impact practice and co-leads the Board practice in the Middle East and North Africa region. She also leads our executive search work in Pakistan.
Experience
Maliha has led board and C-Suite engagements in the Middle East for over 15 years, partnering with clients in education, government and policy, culture and arts, and philanthropy including academic and functional roles across higher education and schools. She has been a trusted advisor to clients on topics including board composition, board governance, board structuring, and succession planning, and brings strong expertise in leading board placements.
Maliha has worked for 20 years in senior global and cross-industry roles in management consulting, project management, and executive search. Her clients include governments, multinationals, and family conglomerate clients in education, non-profit, consulting, financial services, and hospitality.
Maliha previously worked as a managing consultant for IBM Business Consulting Services (previously PricewaterhouseCoopers) where she managed financial transformation change programs for private and public sector clients. In this role, she helped companies across the United States design and implement organizational change through recruiting, training, coaching, and organizational alignment. Maliha also worked with individual senior executives to initiate, drive, and lead strategic change and organizational redesign at Fortune 500 firms in multiple industry sectors. She is fluent in English and Urdu and has a working knowledge of French. She also understands basic Arabic.
Education
University of Virginia, B.S. in Finance, International Business