WSP Global has appointed Emma Wyatt to its Middle East Executive Committee, placing marketing and communications leadership on the body that sets direction for the consultancy's regional business. The appointment was announced on 7 October.
Wyatt keeps her existing role as Senior Vice President, Marketing and Communications for Europe, the Middle East, India, Africa and Asia, a remit that spans the firm's largest geographic grouping outside the Americas. She has spent more than a decade leading marketing and communications teams at the firm and recently relocated to Dubai from a base in the United Kingdom, a move that places her in the region whose committee she now sits on.
Commenting on the appointment, Wyatt said the Middle East is one of the most dynamic and fast-growing regions in the world. Dean McGrail, President for the Middle East and Asia, said the appointments reflect the strength of the business and its ambitions for the future.
She joins the committee alongside Rob Kettlety, Executive Director for Clients and Growth, who has been with the firm for 16 years. The two appointments together broaden a committee that has historically been weighted toward engineering and operational leadership, adding client development and external communications to the group that decides regional strategy.
Placing a marketing and communications leader on a regional executive committee is a less common step for an engineering consultancy than for a consumer business, and it says something about how work is won in the Gulf. The largest programmes in the region are government-sponsored and highly visible, and the firms competing for them are judged not only on technical capability but on how clearly they can articulate a position on sustainability, local content, workforce development and delivery risk. That is communications work as much as engineering work, and it is increasingly decided at the same table as resourcing and bid strategy.
Wyatt's relocation to Dubai is the detail that gives the appointment weight. Regional committee seats held from another continent tend to function as reporting lines rather than as genuine participation, and consultancies operating in the Gulf have been criticised for running the region remotely. Moving the holder of an EMEIAA-wide remit into the region signals that the firm intends the seat to be worked rather than observed, and it gives the Middle East business direct access to the budget and the team that shape how it presents itself to clients across five continents.
