Sheila Al-Rowaily, a former Saudi Aramco treasurer, has been named to the Saudi Central Bank’s board of directors for the first time. King Salman of Saudi Arabia issued a royal decree that resulted in her appointment.
Ms. Al-Rowaily is among a growing number of women taking on senior leadership roles in the kingdom and across the Gulf region.
Increasing the number of women in the workforce could raise the Mena region’s gross domestic product by up to 57 percent, or $2 trillion, a recent report by PwC showed. Ms. Al-Rowaily has served as chief executive of Wisayah Investment Company, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Aramco, since 2019. Wisayah manages Aramco’s pension funds, defined contribution funds, and other long-term investment portfolios.
Ms. Al-Rowaily has served in different trading and investment roles at Aramco for more than 20 years. She joined the world’s largest oil-producing company in 1998 as a money market trader and later worked as a financial analyst based in Dhahran, according to her LinkedIn profile.
In 2006, Ms. Al-Rowaily moved to the energy company’s office in Houston, Texas, where she served as treasurer until the end of 2007.
She subsequently returned to Dhahran to lead Aramco’s portfolio management team, then became director of the investment management department before joining Wisayah. Ms. Al-Rowaily, a Sloan Fellow, attained a master’s degree in business administration from the MIT Sloan School of Management. She obtained a bachelor’s degree in interior architecture from King Faisal University and then earned an MBA in finance, from the American University of Beirut in 1997, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Apart from Ms. Al-Rowaily, the decree also approved the appointment of Hamad Al-Sayyari, Khaled Al-Juffali, Rashed Al-Humaid, and Abdullah Al-Abdulqader to the banking regulator’s board, which is led by the Saudi Central Bank Governor Fahad Al-Mubarak.
