Salem J. Ababneh العربية

Salem J. Ababneh

Business transformation leader, backed by AI

I change how governments and banks actually work, then I use AI to make the change stick.

Manager in Government and Public Sector consulting at PwC Middle East. I lead national modernization programmes, institutional excellence mandates and operating-model redesign across Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, advising Ministers, Deputy Ministers and bank executives.

I have been building AI since 2019, well before it was fashionable, and I still build hands-on. Before consulting I spent eight years inside Jordan Ahli Bank's Innovation Group, from founding member to co-building Qawn, the bank's own neobank on a cloud-native core.

PwC Middle East Amman, Jordan PMP, PMI-PBA Jordan, KSA, UAE

Scale of work

$200M+National modernization roadmap I lead, spanning four years
20Government entities whose AI agenda I helped shape
7Workstreams directed on that roadmap, from AI agents to behavioural science
2Nationwide ministerial AI committees I was appointed to
2019The year I started working in AI, before the GenAI wave
10 yrsTransforming how government and banking teams operate

How I create value

I set the agenda at national scale

I do not write recommendations and leave. I build the roadmap a government executes against, then stay to activate it. The current one runs four years and more than $200M, covering 111 projects across 20 entities, structured into seven workstreams: operating models, AI agents, human resources, policy, data and emerging technologies, behavioural science, and service operations.

I put AI into production, not into decks

I mapped AI use cases across an entire government value chain, a first-of-its-kind exercise that set prioritization across 20 entities. I built and shipped a GPT-4o support assistant grounded in a bank's internal operational data and wired into core-banking APIs. I sit on two nationwide ministerial AI committees with weekly executive engagement. The difference between an AI strategy and an AI system is that I have delivered both.

I make operating models that survive contact

Policies, procedures, service catalogues, KPI frameworks and delegation-of-authority matrices are only worth what gets followed. I model them to BPMN 2.0 with automation in mind, then automate them: 86 bank processes taken end to end, a service-tracking platform covering more than 300, and real-time SLA dashboards so leadership sees the weak points as they happen.

Experience

Oct 2023
to now

Manager, Government and Public Sector, Strategy and Transformation

PwC Middle East, Amman

Lead senior engagements across national modernization, institutional excellence and operating-model transformation in Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Trusted advisor to Ministers, Deputy Ministers and executive committees.

Aug 2016
to Sep 2023

Strategy and Process Manager, Innovation Group

Jordan Ahli Bank, Amman

Co-built Qawn end to end on Thought Machine's Vault cloud-native core. Owned the bank's automation programme, process reengineering practice, and innovation strategy alignment with business-unit roadmaps. Mentored junior analysts.

Aug 2015
to Jul 2016

Innovation Officer, Innovation Group

Jordan Ahli Bank, Amman

Founding team member for the neobank initiative. Ran the bank's first RPA proofs-of-concept and process-reengineering frameworks, which became the foundation for everything automated afterwards.

Selected engagements

Government and public sector

  • National public-sector modernization roadmap for a centre of government. Four years, $200M+, 111 projects, 20 entities, seven workstreams. Directed a multi-office, multi-national team through planning, activation and execution.
  • AI use-case map across the full government value chain. A first-of-its-kind exercise that shaped the AI agenda across 20 entities and drove roadmap prioritization.
  • Two nationwide ministerial AI committees. Appointed member, weekly executive engagement, advising on national AI strategy and prioritization.
  • Policies, procedures and delegation of authority for a military authority. Built the methodological framework, then the full manuals covering core, support and administrative services, with process flowcharts, KPIs and authority matrices.
  • Institutional excellence programme in Saudi Arabia. Eleven months, multi-office team. Policy manuals, process manuals and service catalogues, plus engagement-level RPA that was later adopted firm-wide across two further engagements. Trained 40 client staff.
  • Service catalogue for a foreign affairs mandate in Saudi Arabia. 250+ service cards and an end-to-end service definition framework. Pitched the "virtual embassies" concept, which won buy-in beyond the original scope.
  • Delegation of Authority matrix for a Jordanian ministry. Cut decision-routing time and removed manual rework.
  • Digital transformation strategy for a ministry. Co-led service capture and cataloguing, and envisioned the future service set underpinning the strategy.
  • Process documentation to BPMN 2.0 and ARIS for a ministry and an academy, from level one to level four, with statistical analysis of process concentration and priority.

Banking and financial services

  • Qawn, a cloud-native neobank. Co-built end to end on Thought Machine's Vault: ledger configuration, the account opening journey, eKYC, and CRM and contact-centre integration into the core.
  • GPT-4o customer support assistant. Intent classification, entity extraction and retrieval over internal operational banking data, integrated to core-banking APIs, automating first-line inquiries previously handled by email and the contact centre.
  • 86 processes automated end to end across retail, operations and back office, using RPA, APIs and BPMN.
  • Bank-wide service request tracking system on Microsoft Power Platform, mirroring real process flows across more than 300 banking processes.
  • Executive performance and SLA dashboards on Power BI and Camunda, giving leadership real-time visibility of process weak points.
  • Retail account opening, fully automated, including digital onboarding, eKYC identity verification and activation, in full compliance with local regulation.
  • CRM and contact-centre platforms. HubSpot across sales, marketing and support, and Twilio-based call-centre solutions integrated by API.
  • BPMN 2.0 process mining across lending, onboarding and card issuance, surfacing the bottlenecks nobody had quantified.

Credentials

Education

  • Bachelor's in Accounting, University of Jordan 2011 to 2015

Professional

  • Project Management Professional, PMI 2026
  • Professional in Business Analysis, PMI 2025
  • Vault Fundamentals, Thought Machine 2023
  • Bank Credit Program, Institute of Banking Studies 2016

AI and data, since 2019

  • GenAI Booster: LLM Advanced Implementations, Kubicle 2024
  • Data Booster: Power BI Advanced Analytics, Kubicle 2023
  • Data Science: R, Visualization and Modeling, HarvardX 2020
  • Practical Deep Learning, German Jordanian University 2020
  • AI Bootcamp, Zaka AI 2019
  • RPA Business Analyst Diploma, UiPath Academy 2019

Capabilities

Government transformation National roadmap development Operating model design Institutional excellence AI strategy and prioritization AI agents and agentic systems GenAI and LLMs in production Service design and catalogues Delegation of authority frameworks BPMN 2.0 and process mining RPA at scale Cloud-native core banking Digital banking journeys Performance and SLA dashboards Senior client advisory

Contact

If you are trying to change how a large organization works, and you want AI to be part of the answer rather than the headline, talk to me.

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