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What is the Cooper Fitch difference?
We have been recruiting mid-senior talent since 1997 with over 10,000 appointments across the Middle East. We have specialist technical and recruitment expertise within each of the key vertical markets.
Take a look to see what makes us special as a consultancy firm.
Trefor Murphy
Chief Executive Officer
Trefor is a qualified industrial engineer with experience in both technical and commercial aspects of manufacturing and supply chain management with organizations such as Microsoft, Intel and Trend Technologies. He is the founder and CEO of Cooper Fitch in the United Arab Emirates. Before setting up Cooper Fitch, he was part of the global leadership team for one of the largest international recruitment firms working across Ireland and the United Kingdom. He has spent the past five years in the Middle East with his last role as Managing Director for the MENA region. He brings a wealth of international best practices in search and human resource solutions.
Ebony Thomas
Managing Partner, Head of Manufacturing & Engineering & HR Advisory
Ebony has nearly ten years of global recruitment experience as both - a Consultant and Manager, in the UK, Central Europe and now in the Middle East. Ebony began her recruitment career after graduating from University in 2007. She then spent five years supporting the European market from London focusing on highly specialised technical positions. She relocated to Dubai for a new opportunity in 2013. Ebony is a partner of the firm with her team focusing on providing talent for mid-senior level positions in Supply Chain, Procurement, Manufacturing, Engineering, Quality, HSE, R&D, Human Resources and Technology across the MENA region. She works alongside a variety of local, regional and multinational businesses which have a high demand for technical talent.
Jack Khabbaz
Managing Partner, Head of Advisory & Public Sector
Jack joined Cooper Fitch in 2013 as an Associate Director in Advisory and specializes in Risk, Audit, Deals and Strategy. He brings over eighteen years of recruitment, search, consulting and commercial experience from across Australia and the United Arab Emirates.
During Jack's times at Cooper Fitch he has led senior level appointments and managed key accounts across the Big 4, international consulting firms, government entities and industry side clients throughout the Middle East and Africa. His ability to leverage his commercial acumen, team leadership and client advisory experience has allowed international and regional organizations to achieve their core business objectives.
Jack is originally from Sydney and achieved a Commerce degree at the University of Western Sydney. He is fluent in English and is currently learning to speak Arabic.
Vilius Dobilaitis
Managing Partner, Head of Accounting & Finance, Banking & Financial Services
Vilius manages the “Accounting & Finance” and “Consulting & Practice” recruitment divisions within Cooper Fitch for the Middle East. Vilius personally recruits for senior finance professionals specifically across the UAE, KSA, Oman and Qatar regions. Vilius has worked in recruitment in the United Kingdom, Qatar and now for the last three years in the United Arab Emirates. He specializes in senior finance professionals in a range of industries and across Big 4 practice firms. His key industries are Construction, Hospitality, Asset Management, FMCG, Pharmaceutical, Media, Oil and Gas, Automotive and Telecommunications. Vilius holds Economics and Business Management degrees from Newcastle University, UK.
Janie-Lee Brown
Managing Partner, Operations Director
Janie joined the firm in 2012 and is responsible for all operational requirements of the business, including- human resources, legal compliance, finance, policies and procedures along with the quality of client service delivery. She ensures that everything we do is compliant with Cooper Fitch’s best practices and that the quality of our delivery aligns with clients' expectations. Being a partner in the firm with nearly ten years’ industry experience in the Middle East, Janie heads up the people function for Cooper Fitch and has overall responsibility for staff welfare at all grades across the business.
Noona Nafousi
Associate Director - Sales & Marketing
Noona joined Cooper Fitch in 2013 with nearly twenty years of experience in attracting top talent into organisations. She ran her own recruitment agency at the age of 26 before being headhunted into a Head of Global Recruitment role for a multinational company. This provided Noona with high exposure to recruiting internationally as well as a unique insight into hiring in-house versus within an agency. She holds an Economic B.Sc Degree from the University of London and is also a Master NLP Practitioner. Her successful appointments include Sales Engineers to Directors in technical sales with local to international organisations.
Dale McKerrell
Associate Director - Digital & Technology Practice
Dale has over 10 years of IT experience working for a multinational consultancy in the UK for 7 years before moving to the Middle East to pursue a career in recruitment. Dale worked in the professional services space working across Change and Asset management roles before leading a team assisting a significant migration of office 365. Dale began his recruitment career as a researcher and was quickly promoted to a consultant focusing purely within the IT space. Utilising his knowledge of the IT market and the ability to quickly pick up and understand technologies, Dale has proven to be a very competent recruiter. He specialises in both commercial and technical roles working with Vendors, SIs, Resellers, and Distributors. Dale also works with many customers in the end-user space across multiple industries assisting in sourcing superstar staff for critical implementations as well as critical hires within the management team across META markets.
Viacheslav Shakhov
Head of Tax & Investment Management
Viacheslav (Slav) specializes in recruiting high calibre Accounting, Finance & Tax professionals within industry and practice firms across the Middle East region. He is the Tax recruitment practice leader in Cooper Fitch with a strong exposure in assisting local and multinational industry firms as well as practice organizations in recruiting Tax professionals. His main specializations include Corporate Tax, Transfer Pricing, VAT/Indirect Tax, M&A, International Tax, Human Capital and FATCA. Slav is currently pursuing a Master's degree in International Business and holds a Bachelor’s degree from Australia with extensive work and travel experience in the Middle East region.
Michael Stubbs
Head of Strategy
Michael specialises in strategy, management consulting and PMO. He has successfully supported assignments with Big 4 advisory firms, boutique strategy firms placing candidates from Senior Associate to Partner level. Furthermore, Michael has assisted many public sector clients in their nationalisation. He has managed complex project-based appointments mainly in the UAE and KSA market including helping the expansion of the Ministry’s Project Management and Strategy Management Offices. Throughout his experience, Michael has developed a high calibre of service delivery and reliable contacts within the Strategy and Consulting sectors, which benefit both his clients and candidates.
Alan Hynes
Head of Banking & Financial Services
Alan leads the “Banking & Financial Services” team at Cooper Fitch. He has over three years of experience in financial services recruitment in the UAE and GCC. He covers a broad range of areas within financial services such as asset management, wealth management and investment banking with a particular strength in compliance, regulation, and governance. He has previous experience working as a Fund Accountant with a multinational bank and has completed international work placements in the USA, France, Luxembourg and now, here in the Middle East. Along with being CIPD qualified, he also has a Bachelor’s Degree in Human Resources and French in which he is fluent.
Kassem Zaiter
Consultant | Technical Sales
Kassem Zaiter joined the Cooper Fitch team in 2018 as a Technical Sales Consultant. With many years of experience in Sales, he recruits for all technical roles across the GCC and MENA region. He has previously worked as a Business Development Manager in a well-renowned Investment and Real Estate organisation. He also has experience in Sales across Event Management and Retail. His dedication for work and his eye for the right talent have made him a great addition to the Cooper Fitch Family. Originally from Lebanon, he is fluent in both English and Arabic.
Jake Hayward
Consultant | Manufacturing & Engineering
Jake Hayward became a part of the Cooper Fitch family in 2018. He joined the team as a Manufacturing & Engineering consultant serving clients in his sector across the GCC and MENA region. He started his career in Construction & Infrastructure recruitment for one year. He later transitioned into the Oil, Gas and Technical engineering industries where he was responsible for making permanent placements in the UAE for two years. He simultaneously worked as an Account Manager responsible for managing and growing the Oil & Gas EPC contracting in Kuwait for one year. Originally from Wales, UK, he graduated with a Bachelor’s degree of Science in Sports Studies from the University of South Wales.
Kazim Hussain
Consultant | Technology
Kazim specializes in the Datacenter and Cloud industry on the Technology desk across the META region at Cooper Fitch. After successful completion of his Bachelor’s in Business Administration in the UK, Kaz joined the Cooper Fitch Graduate Program as an Associate Consultant in 2016 working purely within the IT space. His knowledge and strong contacts in the IT Market in the region has been fundamental to his success. Kaz has proven to be a resilient recruiter in his space delivering the top Sales, Presales and Technical Talent to major accounts which include Marketing, Pre Sales, Networking Infrastructure, Routing, Switching, IP, MPLS, BGP, OSPF, Ethernet, WLAN, Data Centre, Cloud Computing, Storage, Virtualisation and Software Defined Networking.
Mughees Ahmed
Consultant - Private Banking & Investment Advisory
Mughees has six years of full-cycle recruitment experience, supporting key stakeholders within the private banking market. In the past, he has focused on managing senior business placements within the financial services sector across UAE, Upper Gulf & various financial hubs in MENA. Mughees specializes in providing a collaborative and thorough recruitment solution to his clients and has lead several industry mapping exercises for strategic hires.
Marlene Antalan
Office Manager
Marlene heads the service delivery and support division for Cooper Fitch, ensuring a high level of service to our clients and candidates in the region. She joined the business in 2013 and has been a significant mechanism in building the Cooper Fitch difference. After graduating with a degree in Tourism in the Philippines, Marlene relocated to Dubai to commence her professional career. She contributes a wealth of experience within customer service and back-office administration, having gained valuable experience with a number of sales support and BPO firms in the Philippines and the past six years within the United Arab Emirates.
Julia Revai
Financial Controller
Julia became an integral part of Cooper Fitch’s operations team in 2018. As our financial controller, she maintains the business’s financial reports, records, general ledgers; prepares and analyses budgets and performs regular bookkeeping. With over 10 years of experience, she has worked for some of the most well-known international organisations. Originally from Hungary, she is fluent in English, Arabic and Hungarian. She is a qualified Economist and Vocational Teacher of economics. Julia graduated from Budapesti Corvinus Egyetem.
Ameera Taher
Consultant - Advisory
Delivering and managing talent for highly technical client projects across the UAE and KSA specialising in the advisory field; Ameera has a proven track record with senior-level Big 4, top tier strategy houses and multinational consulting appointments, such as Director of Strategy and Member of Steering Committee. Graduated Middlesex University with a BSc in Human Resources Management. Born and raised within the GCC, Ameera can draw upon her knowledge of the local culture in her interactions with clients and candidates based regionally, in addition to providing candidates in international markets with a more detailed insight into the Gulf region.
Ziad Bartz
Associate Consultant | Investment Management & Tax
Ziad joined Cooper Fitch in 2018 as an Investment Management & Tax Associate Consultant. With over a year in the recruitment and talent acquisition industry, he has proven to be a great asset to the Cooper Fitch team. He has also worked as a research consultant in Sales & Marketing and specifically the IT and Technology sector. Originally from Germany, he is fluent in Arabic, English and German. He earned a Bachelor’s degree in Business Management from Brunel University, London.
