Why The Middle East Matters Now

Kelly Kovack is the quietly loud renegade of the beauty industry with 25 years of experience and an ability for intuiting emerging trends. Leaning right but fueled by left-brain thinking, her career is the culmination of identifying white space, developing category defining strategies and building brands from conceptual startups to tactical cleanups. Kelly is someone who makes things happen.

Kelly launched BeautyMatter in the Fall of 2016 with the firm belief that in a fast-moving world, information is knowledge, but context matters. And more importantly, innovation comes from the cross-pollination of industries and expertise. She set out to use her experience building brands and scaling businesses to offer a new perspective and holistic approach to B2B content that filled a void in the beauty industry.

As Chief Commercial Officer, Flyn oversees Messe Frankfurt Middle East’s event portfolios and commercial activities, driving strategy, business development and operational excellence to ensure sustainable growth and profitability.

Prior to her position on the Executive Board, Flyn was Portfolio Director for the Consumer Goods verticals, including championing Beautyworld Middle East and Saudi Arabia where she was responsible for the development and execution of event strategies, customer focused solutions and deep industry insights and engagement that drives event growth.

With over 17 years’ experience in B2B events for retail, beauty and eCommerce, including Beauty Expo Australia, Flyn consistently delivers innovation-rich, first-class events with a strong focus on building high performing and passionate teams to create superior solutions and experiences for customers and industry communities.

Amna is a Senior Consultant at Euromonitor International, based in Dubai. As a thought leader and industry expert in beauty, health, luxury, and fashion, her insights and analysis provide global, regional, and local brands with tactical and strategic solutions to foster company growth, with a special focus on the MENAT and Pakistan Regions. She advises clients across these industries on topics ranging from health and wellness, understanding government agendas, consumer trends, and business strategy planning.

Amna is also one of the authors of the annually published "Top 10 Global Consumer Trends" white paper.Along with regular interactions with major global and regional beauty and fashion industry players, she has been a proactive contributor to articles and interviews through various platforms such as exhibitions, TV, radio, and press media. Some examples include Beautyworld, CNN, Forbes, Euro News, Dubai Eye, Gulf News, and Images Retail ME. Amna holds Master of Strategic Marketing, top graduate, from the University of Wollongong. She has been active in the field of market research intelligence for more than a decade, bringing with her rich insights on the region and beyond.

Anisha Oberoi is the Founder & CEO of SECRET SKIN, an award-winning platform that connects Middle East consumers to global Conscious Beauty & Wellness brands. Built on a tech-enabled framework that focuses on social and environmental impact, SECRET SKINS value proposition is a Clean World of Beauty with products that are cruelty free and gender neutral, indexing highly on performance and ingredient integrity. Anisha launched her company during Covid in 2020 as a BC discovery platform before moving into physical stores, and SECRET SKINS story is very much her own story borne out of a struggle with Breast Cancer.

In 2023, SECRET SKIN became a Techstars portfolio company and is today GCC's fastest growing startup in the premium beauty category. Their mission is to raise the awareness of Women's Health in the region leveraging social advocacy, innovation and technology. 65% of SECRET SKIN's investors are women.

Anisha holds an MBA degree from the prestigious INSEAD Business School and has been widely published in local and global media. Prior to founding the startup, Anisha worked for five years with Amazon to build the Fashion & Beauty portfolio in India and Australia.

Polly Williams has more than 20 years’ experience in the PR and Marketing world. Starting her career in-house for a luxury fashion retailer, Polly soon moved agency side working at MediaCom and UM in London before moving to Asia to work with clients such as Procter & Gamble Fine Fragrances, Gillette and SK-II as well as Nestle and Singapore Airlines for the APAC region. Polly then moved to Publicis Group to manage Business Development for APAC before leaving Singapore for Dubai. Polly led client services for TishTash, focusing on key beauty clients such as Johnson and Johnson, before becoming Managing Director the following year. Polly’s first goal as MD was to grow the agency by adding more global brands to its roster of clients. TishTash now works with brands including The Body Shop, Lush, Elizabeth Arden and Instax to name a few. Polly has also been instrumental in evolving TishTash into a full 360 communications agency, launching its social, design and content divisions and most recently creating TishTash’s corporate division, TEN by TishTash.