Riyadh, Saudi Arabia — Mohammed Bin Salman Foundation (Misk)

Bandar Khalid Kari

بندر خالد كعري

Project Management · Digital Transformation · Impact at Scale

Project Management Misk Foundation PMP® Certified

Computer science major. At the Mohammed Bin Salman Foundation (Misk) I run PMO-governed projects from initiation to closure and lead the digital transformation programs that reach more than two million beneficiaries.

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Portrait of Bandar Khalid Kari
Riyadh · 2026 B. K. Kari
0M+

Beneficiaries served by platforms and programs

0

National-level programs in my delivery and reporting scope

+0%

Rise in beneficiary satisfaction and service-delivery efficiency

−0%

Manual support effort removed through workflow automation

0+

Users onboarded in a single enterprise platform rollout

01

Profile

Delivery and digital transformation, run as one job.

Project management at Misk: projects run from initiation to closure inside PMO governance — plans, milestones and dependencies, risk and issue logs, change control, KPI tracking, and the executive reporting leadership decides from. Computer science major; PMP and PMI-ACP certified.

Digital transformation runs through the same work, not alongside it: the enterprise platform rollouts, the beneficiary service journeys rebuilt end to end, and the reporting pipelines that made those programs measurable were all projects I led. Owning the delivery plan and the technology in one pair of hands is what removes the translator between the plan and the build — and it is why I was able to found and build Qafza, an AI coaching and mentoring platform, on my own.

Strategy is only worth what gets delivered. My job is to close that distance — and to prove it closed, with data.

02

Experience

Four years inside Saudi Arabia's flagship youth-empowerment foundation, and a product of my own alongside it.

  1. 2025 —
    Present

    Founder & Product Lead

    Qafza · qafza.me

    • Founded Qafza and carried it from idea to a platform running in production — product direction, interface, build and release.
    • Set the product scope: decided what the platform would do and what it would not, and sequenced the build so the core pairing flow shipped first.
    • Designed the matching approach — pairing on goals, expertise and experience level rather than job title — which the rest of the product is arranged around.
    • Own the production stack behind it: authentication and access rules, the data model, deployment and monitoring.
  2. Nov 2023 —
    Present

    Senior Project Specialist

    Mohammed Bin Salman Foundation (Misk) · Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

    • Lead delivery across 18 national-level programs, managing projects from initiation to closure under PMO governance standards.
    • Lead digital transformation initiatives — enterprise platform rollouts, workflow optimization and data-driven improvements to beneficiary services for roughly 2,500 users.
    • Build and drive project plans — timelines, milestones, deliverables, dependencies and resourcing — and control change requests against scope and schedule impact.
    • Identify, assess and monitor risks and issues; maintain the logs and chase mitigation and corrective action with the owners.
    • Raised service-delivery efficiency 15% through vendor management, dependency coordination and operational follow-up.
    • Track and analyze project KPIs, and publish the status reports, Power BI dashboards and executive summaries leadership works from.
    • Work with vendors, partners and cross-functional teams to lift platform adoption and user experience across the portfolio.
  3. Oct 2022 —
    Nov 2023

    Project Specialist

    Mohammed Bin Salman Foundation (Misk) · Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

    • Supported program management and PMO delivery across multiple initiatives — action tracking, risk and issue logs, and stakeholder coordination.
    • Increased beneficiary engagement 18% by segmenting audience data and rebuilding the targeting behind the digital campaigns.
    • Developed and maintained the digital platforms behind program delivery, using SQL and Python to extend and automate them.
    • Coordinated foundation-wide volunteer operations for the Misk Global Forum 2023, placing 42 volunteers on time and to standard.
    • Implemented PMO templates, reporting practice and documentation standards, strengthening project visibility and delivery consistency.
One thing that truly stood out was how he single-handedly developed a complex AI-enabled system with the potential to drive real impact at scale. Beyond the technical delivery, I have always appreciated his willingness to support others, his curious mindset, and his ability to find solutions even when the path is not immediately clear.
Dr. Tom Dreyer Director of Leadership Development Managed Bandar directly
03

Selected Projects

One product I founded; three deliveries owned end to end.

Qafza — AI Coaching & Mentoring Platform

Live at qafza.me

Founder · Product, engineering and design · qafza.me

Founded, built, and running in production. An AI-powered platform that pairs people with the right coach or mentor, then carries the relationship through to a measured outcome. The matching engine weighs goals, expertise, experience level and preferences; the platform then handles scheduling, secure messaging and video, goal and milestone tracking, post-session reflection, certificates, and analytics on impact. It covers both sides of professional development — coach to coachee and mentor to mentee — in one system.

Full scope

Product, engineering, design and deployment

AI

Matching on goals, expertise and preferences

Live

Running in production on its own domain

FounderAI MatchingProduct OwnershipFull-Stack BuildAnalytics

Coaching & Mentoring Platform — Enterprise Rollout

Nov 2024 — Feb 2025

Project Lead · Misk Leadership

A rollout against a live clock. Led the end-to-end implementation of an enterprise coaching and mentoring platform across three flagship leadership programs, owning scope, timeline, milestones and vendor performance. Replaced hand-run coaching workflows with automated ones, folded feedback instruments into the session cycle, and moved the entire coach and participant population onto the platform while cohorts were still mid-program.

2,400+

Leaders, coaches and mentees onboarded

−60%

Manual support effort per cycle

NPS ↑

Measurable lift in satisfaction and Net Promoter Score

Digital TransformationPlatform RolloutWorkflow AutomationVendor ManagementChange ControlAdoption

Beneficiaries Success Initiative — Misk Hub

Jan 2024 — May 2024

Project Lead · Misk Hub

A service redesign at national scale. Rebuilt the beneficiary feedback and support journey end to end across a base of two million people, and stood up Power BI dashboards over ETL pipelines so satisfaction became a number the team watched continuously rather than a figure that arrived once a year. Drove the adoption and monitoring that held the gains after launch.

2M

Beneficiaries in scope

+15%

Increase in beneficiary satisfaction

Real-time

Feedback and KPI monitoring, replacing manual reporting

Digital TransformationService TransformationPower BIETLSurvey AnalyticsContinuous Monitoring

Organization-Wide Volunteering Program

May 2023 — Nov 2023

Project Lead · Misk Foundation

The hardest kind of delivery: a program nobody had asked for. Built the case for the foundation's first organization-wide volunteering program from scratch, won executive sponsorship and budget without a mandate to fall back on, and designed it around the foundation's commitment to empowering Saudi youth. Debuted it at the Misk Global Forum 2023, then embedded it across every major foundation event so it outlived its launch and became a standing capability rather than a one-off.

1st

Organization-wide volunteer program in Misk's history

Exec

Leadership sponsorship secured and sustained

All events

Integrated across the foundation's event calendar

Program ManagementProgram DesignExecutive Buy-InStakeholder EngagementMisk Global ForumYouth Empowerment
04

Recognition

What the work was judged to be worth.

Organization level

Misk Foundation Best Project 2024

Judged across the full project portfolio of the Mohammed Bin Salman Foundation (Misk).

2018 — 2022

Dean's Academic Achievement Award

California State University, San Bernardino — for sustained academic standing in Computer Science.

Languages

العربية · ArabicNative
EnglishFluent

Professional Training

  • Next-Generation Leadership Skills
  • KPIs — Key Performance Indicator frameworks
  • Critical Thinking & Problem Solving
  • Building Stakeholder Relationships Through Effective Communication
05

Capabilities

What I bring to a program, end to end.

Project & Program Management

  • Project management, initiation to closure
  • PMO governance & standards
  • Project planning & scheduling
  • Risk management & risk logs
  • Issue management & escalation
  • Change control & impact assessment
  • Executive reporting & dashboards
  • Workshop & review facilitation

Digital Transformation

  • Digital platform implementation
  • Workflow automation & optimization
  • Vendor & partner management
  • Systems integration
  • Cloud architecture fundamentals (AWS)

Data & Insight

  • Data-driven decision making
  • Power BI & Tableau
  • SQL · Python · R
  • ETL & Power Query
  • Data modelling & validation
  • KPI frameworks & continuous monitoring
  • Survey & feedback analytics
  • Data visualisation

Leadership & Stakeholders

  • Stakeholder engagement at executive level
  • Cross-functional team coordination
  • Strategic planning
  • Mentoring & coaching
  • Critical thinking & problem solving
  • Bilingual communication — Arabic & English
06

Credentials

Certifications held, and where the training came from.

Core certifications

Project Management Professional (PMP)Project Management Institute
PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)Project Management Institute
AWS Certified Solutions ArchitectAmazon Web Services
CompTIA Security+ (SY0-601)CompTIA · Secure Code Design & Implementation

Additional certifications

Digital Transformation CertificationPwC
Microsoft Office 365 FundamentalsMicrosoft
Linux Management for CentOSThe Linux Foundation
Social Media Marketing: Strategy & OptimizationDigital Marketing Institute
Advanced Cisco Routing — RIPv2, EIGRP, OSPFCisco
2018 — 2022

B.Sc. Computer Science

California State University, San Bernardino · California, USA

Dean's Academic Achievement Award

07

Writing

Published on Misk Hub.

Aug 2023

Infinite Ambition

An argument that ambition should not stop at first success. It reframes obstacles as the mechanism of growth rather than the interruption of it, sets out a seven-step approach to working through them — naming the specific obstacle, building a plan against it, holding confidence, asking for support, and reading failure for what it teaches — and applies the SMART goal framework (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound) to personal objectives rather than only workplace ones.

Misk Hub · Insights · Education & Career · 15 August 2023