Board
of Directors

Shaikh Ali bin Khalifa AlKhalifa

Shaikh Ali bin Khalifa AlKhalifa joined the Bahrain Defense Force in June 1996 and currently holds the rank of Colonel; during his 24 year tenure he has held various positions within the organization.

Shaikh Ali graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from The George Washington University in the USA, earned his Master’s in Business Administration from DePaul Graduate programme at BIBF, Bahrain. He earned a Masters of Arts in Defense Studies from King’s College, London.

Shaikh Ali has been involved in a number of sports initiatives locally, regionally and internationally and has held various positions over the years. Some of them include: President of Bahrain Football Association, Member of Asian Football Association Executive Committee, Member of the Bahrain Olympic Committee, President of Bahrain Cycling Association and a member of FIFA Competitions Committee. 

He currently also serves as a Board Member of the Bahrain Telecommunication Company (Batelco) B.S.C. He was appointed as the Chairman of BNET’s Board of Directors at the 2020 Annual General Meeting, prior to that he was serving as the Deputy Chairman since June 2018.

Shaikh Salman bin Mohamed AlKhalifa

Shaikh Salman bin Mohamed AlKhalifa currently holds the position of Chief Executive Officer of the National Center for Cybersecurity.

He graduated from Suffolk University from Boston Massachusetts, USA with a Double Major in Accounting & Information Technology. He has more than 20 years of experience as he began his career at the Central Informatics Organization (CIO) and has held various positions within the Authority including Network Engineer, Section Head of the Smart Card Initiative Project, Director General of IT, Deputy CEO operations and Governance; in addition to his tenure served at the Royal Court to set up the IT infrastructure. 

Amongst his most spectacular achievements at the Authority include the execution of the New Government Data Network (GDN) project, on which High Speed MPLS resulted in linking all of Bahrain’s governmental agencies together, and the development of the National Identity Card using the Smartcard Technology.

Shaikh Salman also developed and implemented applications for several critical Government Organizations, which enabled the e-Government program to deliver e-Services through the National Portal - bahrain.bh - by linking the systems in various organizations. He also established the Government’s private cloud which is the foundation for the consolidation project in government agencies. Moreover, he is currently leading the Government of Bahrain’s technical team in migrating the Government’s IT services to AWS.

Shaikh Salman serves as a board member in Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA). He was appointed as a BNET Board Member at the 2020 Annual General Meeting.

Dr. Daniel Ritz

Dr. Ritz is currently the Management Board Spokesperson at WALTER GROUP, a Vienna-based, privately held conglomerate specializing in road freight, mobility solutions, leasing, and real estate.

Prior to joining WALTER GROUP in 2023, Dr. Ritz held leadership positions in the telecoms industry for 20 years, including CEO of Tele Columbus (Germany), CEO of PTCL (Pakistan), CSO of Etisalat Group (UAE), CSO of Swissom Group (Switzerland) and Chairman of the Chief Strategy Officer Group of GSMA. He began his professional career at Boston Consulting Group (BCG) where he rose to Partner & Managing Director.  During his tenure in the telecoms industry, Dr. Ritz also held various Non-Executive Director positions at listed and privately-held companies, including Maroc Telecom (Morocco), PTCL (Pakistan), Thuraya (UAE), Fastweb (Italy) and BICS (Belgium).

Dr. Ritz earned a Master’s Degree and a Ph.D. in Business Administration, both from the University of St. Gallen (Switzerland) and was a visiting Ph.D. student at Harvard Business School (USA)

Ahmad Mazhar

Mr. Ahmad Mazhar is the Executive Director – Strategic Investments at Mumtalakat. He has over 15 years of experience in private equity with a strong track record in sourcing, executing, and managing portfolio companies across a diverse range of industries in MENA, Southeast Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Over the course of his career, he has worked closely with management teams and held key board positions across multiple organizations.  
 
Prior to holding this role, Mr. Mazhar was a Managing Director at Helios Fairfax Partners (HFP), overseeing new investments and portfolio management for the Southern Africa region.  He also served as an interim Chief Restructuring Officer of AFGRI Group, a portfolio company of HFP and one of the largest Agri services company in Southern Africa.  He has also held various positions at several international organizations such as the Abraaj Group, Fairfax Africa Holdings and Emerging Capital Partners.
 
Mr. Mahzar holds an MBA in Finance and Entrepreneurship from the University of Pennsylvania, The Wharton School, and a BEng in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology.