Tabreed has announced two key appointments - Nadia Bardawil as the chief legal counsel and Philippe Coquelle as chief development officer - effective May 1. Lauding the appointments, Tabreed said Bardawil, who succeeds Hamish Joost, is the first female member of Tabreed's executive management team, while Coquelle takes over from Francois-Xavier Boul, who joined as the company's chief development officer in September 2017. A senior lawyer, Bardawil has more than 15 years of experience in working on the development and financing of energy and infrastructure projects in Mena and Europe. She spent 12 years at global law firm Shearman & Sterling before joining Masdar as General Counsel, where she won numerous awards for leadership and promotion of diversity and inclusion and was named as a Chambers GC Influencer on their 2019 UAE list.

Her most recent role was Senior Legal Advisor to Mubadala, where she was responsible for managing some of the group's largest global assets. Coquelle joins Tabreed from Engie, where he has performed numerous roles in project management, business development, project finance and mergers and acquisitions (M&A) worldwide since joining in 2001, most recently as corporate M&A director at the group's Paris headquarters. For more than 20 years he has operated within the international energy sector, having worked in Paris, London, Brussels, Panama and Dubai, said the statement from Tabreed.

He spent four years in the UAE between 2014 and 2018, focusing on the development and project financing of power and water infrastructure across the Middle East, is fluent in French, Spanish and English, and has a Master in Energy and Environment from University of Brussels (Brussels, Belgium), and a Master in Finance from the London Business School (London, UK), it added.