Profiles of the Diaspora: Selma Turki

There are approximately 20 million citizens of the Middle East and North Africa region living abroad. For their countries of origin and the region as a whole, they represent a potential goldmine of knowledge, skills and business networks that remain largely untapped. A new World Bank report Mobilizing the Middle East and North Africa Diaspora for Economic Integration and Entrepreneurship makes the case for regional governments to partner with their diaspora as they can be a source of much more than remittances alone. This blog series aims to introduce readers to individual members of the diaspora, to put a human face on the vast potential they represent. 

 
“I firmly believe in Tunisia and in her human potential.”

Born in Tunisia, Selma Turki left her native country for France when she was two. She returned to Tunisia for high school and to pass her Baccalaureate. She studied architecture for two years at the Paris Ecole des Beaux Arts before moving to Canada to pursue her studies in computer science. She also accomplished leadership and management education at Henley Business School (UK) and Berkeley (US).
 
After completing her studies, she stayed on in Canada and went to work for IBM. After only three years and already on a management track, IBM transferred her to Belgium where she was asked to help expand the IBM footprint in the Service management arena. Between 2000 and 2009 Selma took several World-Wide as well European business and leadership positions driving services and or alliances for IBM.
 
In 2009, when IBM shifted its focus on growth markets, based upon her skills and background, she was asked to also shift her focus to regional growth markets developing in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) service offerings for IBM Global Technology Services (GTS). She led a team that developed, enabled and deployed key focused offerings and assets. Most recently, and after the ‘Arab Spring’, Turki was assigned to head the IBM IT Services Business unit for the North West Africa region where she also helped build a strong business case for the setup and deployment of regional services in business continuity and resiliency. By accepting that challenge, she helped open the doors for IBM as a key vendor for the deployment of asset based offerings and solutions. One of her missions was to build and manage a multidisciplinary and multicultural team of IT sales and consulting professionals to support an IBM presence in such key areas as cloud computing, data security and mobility and datacentre and IT service management and also to help develop a strong ecosystem in the services arena. In this context, she was instrumental in helping IBM win several major tenders for key global and regional clients. She has attended a number of global events and conferences as a guest and keynote speaker.
 
Turki has participated in numerous seminars and conferences in Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco on technology transfer, the development of the cloud computing ecosystem, security issues for Africa and the critical aspects of datacentre resiliency. Beyond her professional commitment as an interdisciplinary team leader, Turki is the cultural diversity leader for the Benelux region. For four years consecutively, she has been successful in developing activities within IBM as well as sponsoring non-profit organizations supporting youth education and mentoring. She is a volunteer coach for young professionals of diverse cultural backgrounds both within and outside her organization. In addition, Turki volunteers time to work on computer literacy with recent immigrants as a member of the IBM on-demand community, Global Initiative.
 
Selma Turki strongly believes in Tunisia and in the country’s human potential in the IT sector in general where she believes Tunisia could become a major actor not only in Africa but also potentially in the Mediterranean Basin as well.