Why AI Readiness Starts With People, Not Platforms

When people talk about artificial intelligence, the conversation almost always turns to technology first. Shayma Kurz starts somewhere else entirely: with people.

As Founder and CEO of Digital Advice Consulting, she works with governments, semi-government entities, and private sector organizations across the UAE and the wider region. Her focus is not just on systems. It is on the leaders and teams who have to make those systems actually work, day in and day out, long after the initial rollout excitement has worn off.

Her core belief is simple, even if the work behind it is not. Technology alone does not transform an organization. Real, sustainable change happens when leadership, people, strategy, and process evolve together.

That perspective did not come from a textbook. It came from more than fifteen years of hands-on experience across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and North America, working inside transformation initiatives that spanned technology, data, operations, innovation, and organizational change.

With a background in computer engineering and experience across technology, transformation, and leadership development, Shayma has built her career at the intersection of technology and people. Her work brings together technical understanding, strategic thinking, and a deep focus on helping organizations and their people navigate change.

Her path has taken her through very different worlds. She spent time within the structure and scale of a global corporation like Mercedes-Benz, and she has also led through the speed and uncertainty of startup life. Few professionals carry both of those experiences at once, and it shows in how she works with clients today. She is equally comfortable in a boardroom discussing long-term strategy and sitting with a frontline team walking through how their daily work is actually going to change.

Based in Dubai, Shayma built Digital Advice Consulting around a question that most organizations are only now beginning to take seriously: are they truly ready for AI adoption? Not ready in terms of software, but ready in terms of leadership, workforce confidence, and culture. It is a question she puts to governments and enterprises across the UAE and GCC, and one she says is far harder to answer honestly than most leadership teams expect.

Through AI readiness assessments, executive advisory, and structured leadership development programs, Shayma helps organizations move past scattered pilots and one-off experiments. Plenty of institutions can point to an AI project or two. Far fewer can point to a workforce that actually trusts the change, or leaders equipped to guide people through it. That gap, she says, is where most transformation efforts quietly stall.

“The organizations that succeed with AI won’t necessarily have the best technology. They will have leaders who can guide change, workforces prepared to adopt it, and organizations ready to transform.”

On a day set aside to celebrate the achievements of Emirati women, Shayma Kurz’s work is a reminder of something easy to overlook in conversations dominated by talk of algorithms and automation. Some of the most important transformation happening in the UAE right now has very little to do with machines. It has everything to do with the people getting their organizations ready for what comes next, and the leaders, like Shayma, who are doing the quiet, difficult work of getting them there.

Digital Advice Consulting