Speaker profile

Aradhana Khowala

Chief Executive Officer & Founder
Aptamind Partners

Chair of the Advisory Board
The Red Sea Project Saudi Arabia

Aradhana Khowala is globally identified as an authority on the travel, tourism and hospitality industries and has over two decades of experience across 70+ countries in four continents. She is currently CEO & Founder of Aptamind Partners a Private Client Advisory that is a trusted advisor to ambitious leaders in Governments, Family Offices, Private UHNW Investors and International Organisations. Previously she was the MD of Tourism Sector at NEOM - the US$ 500 Billion land of the future purpose built for a sustainable and a new way of living.

An experienced Board Member she has an active portfolio of Board roles and currently serves as the Chair of the Advisory Board of the Red Sea Project in Saudi Arabia which is a signature “giga” project of Saudi Arabia Vision 2030, which, through breakthrough models for international tourism, sets new standards for sustainable development and environmental stewardship.

Aradhana also serves as a Board Member and Steering Committee member of World Tourism Forum Lucerne a highly focused, top level, strategic body that brings together selected leaders around the world to reflect on the big challenges facing the industry. She is also a Board Member of Elaf Group, the leisure arm of a sustainable and publicly listed holding company - SEDCO. In the past she has worked for Jones Lang LaSalle, covering UK, Benelux and Scandinavian markets, a Strategy Consulting practice in Europe and Asia as well as in Hospitality Operations in India.

Aradhana has won multiple awards including the 21st Century Icon Awards in 2017 in association with CNBC and London School of Economics as an Inspirational Game Changer in Tourism. In 2014, she was featured as one of the 50 most Influential Next Generation leaders who will likely define the future of the Tourism sector by Swiss Economic magazine Bilan (Forbes equivalent) and in 2021 she was featured as an inspirational woman rethinking a sustainable future of tourism by City Nation Place.

A keen industry practitioner, she is a regular speaker and moderator well known for her international advocacy on sustainable tourism, climate change, women and diversity and has participated in global policy discussions in United Nations bodies, WEF as well as the G20 apart from some of the foremost Family Office conferences as well as Tourism and Leadership Summits around the world. She read at Cornell University in US, is a certified NLP Coach, has an MBA from Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne in Switzerland and an International Director Certification from INSEAD in France.

A passionate advocate of the transformative power of tourism and the prospect it presents for combining conservation with community, culture and commerce, she spends a lot of her time engaging Presidents, Prime Ministers and Tourism Ministers lobbying for travel and tourism as a force for good. She also guest-lectures on tourism, authentic leadership and entrepreneurship at different Universities globally.