Profile
Sam (Sameer) Poonja is a general manager and P&L owner based in Dubai. He is Senior Partner, Client at Publicis Groupe, working across Publicis Sapient and Digitas in the Middle East. He was previously Managing Director and Chief Experience Officer for Merkle MENAT, part of dentsu; Head and Vice President of Product at Emirates Airline Group; and co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Spades, a hospitality payments company acquired by qlub in January 2024.
His career has followed one pattern: take a business line that is unbuilt, underperforming or not yet commercial, and give it a shape, a team and a number. At Visa he built the design, innovation-centre and partnerships practice from green-field across CEMEA, the UK, the USA and Pan-Africa to eight figures a year in value-added services and an eight-figure consulting and analytics book — the first team to monetise design and innovation at Visa. At Emirates he created the digital product unit from nothing and grew it to 45 people, took the online channel from under 10% to over 20% of sales against a nine-figure monthly revenue book, and built the Skywards platform behind the programme's move from single digits to high double digits in members actively earning and burning — a 20x increase.
He holds seven board and advisory mandates, including the Bahrain Economic Development Board, Fintech Saudi, Fintech Galaxy at the Central Bank of Bahrain, Bahrain FinTech Bay and DIFC FinTech Hive. Alongside his commercial career he has spent nine years as Leaders International Forum Director at the Aga Khan Development Network, working on digital financial inclusion in developing communities across Africa and Central Asia.
He began his career in hotel operations in 1997 — Assistant Director, Front Office at Westin Hotels, then Director, Front Office at Hyatt Hotels — before moving into technology and consulting.
He is a Canadian and Australian citizen, and has lived and worked in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Singapore, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.
How I work
I am usually hired where ambition has outrun execution: to set direction, build the capability and take responsibility for the outcome.
In practice that means a capability that has to exist and does not yet — a practice, a product unit, a loyalty proposition, a function with a number attached to it. Every one I have built has had to prove itself commercially, because that is the only way a new function survives contact with the rest of the business.
Most of them ran across regions and teams that did not report to me. That shapes how I work: standards and evidence first, authority earned rather than assigned. I am sceptical of transformation as an end in itself. If an experience investment cannot be argued in retention, conversion, participation or lifetime value, I would rather not make the case for it at all.
Experience
Senior Partner, Client — Publicis Sapient & Digitas
- Commercial ownership of client strategy and growth across financial services, aviation, travel and hospitality, telecoms and sport.
- Convenes three agencies and the wider Groupe into a single client offer, with no line authority over any of them.
Managing Director & Chief Experience Officer — MENAT
- Owned the practice P&L across financial services, payments, automotive, FMCG, smart government, airlines, retail, education and health — revenue, margin, utilisation and headcount.
- Member of the Merkle EMEA senior leadership team and board, with practice leadership spanning MENA, Asia, Europe and North America.
- Built the CXM practice at dentsu MENAT from the ground up: capability, standards, operating model and regional delivery.
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer
- Full executive accountability for a company: product, engineering, commercial, finance, hiring, investors and the board.
- Built pay-at-table for restaurants and hospitality — scan, pay and go in under ten seconds, with loyalty earned and burned against the bill. Featured as a Stripe case study.
- Sold to competitor qlub in January 2024, twenty-nine months from launch. Continues as investor and strategic advisor.
Executive Advisor — Innovation, Digital & Design
- Advised the Chief Executive and Chief Digital Officer of Saudi Arabia's largest bank, working across an organisation of 120+ in strategy, product, design, engineering and integration.
- Led due diligence on the bank's acquisition of Efigence.
Partner | Senior Advisor — Financial Services, Digital Banking & Payments
- Account ownership and commercial responsibility across leading institutions in the Middle East and Africa, supervising programmes whose combined teams exceeded 100 people.
SVP & Group Head — Product Innovation, Design & Partnerships
- Launched the first MSME digital bank in Saudi Arabia — 52 new clients in six weeks.
- Shipped a loyalty proposition with instant redemption that drove a 21% increase in new customer acquisition, and digital IPO subscription across two major listings.
Head | Senior Director, Product — Innovation, Design & Partnerships
- Built the practice, innovation centres and design function from green-field across four regions to eight figures a year in value-added services and an eight-figure consulting book.
- Delivered 50+ client programmes and 100+ differentiated value propositions.
- Redesigned Etihad Guest in 2017–18 around instant recognition and instant gratification — the first airline loyalty programme of its kind to run on card-linked offers, with earn and redemption triggered at the point of sale rather than through vouchers and codes.
Head | Vice President, Product — Solutions Design, UX/UI and Analytics
- Created the digital product unit as a single entity and grew it to 45+ people; held its P&L and sat on the business solutions leadership team.
- Took online from under 10% to over 20% of sales against a nine-figure monthly revenue book, and opened payment acceptance to guests in 138 countries across 148 localised sites in 22 languages.
- Built the Emirates Skywards platform behind the programme's move from single digits to high double digits in members actively earning and burning — a 20x increase.
Earlier career — general management, eCommerce and three ventures founded
- General manager, group director and vice-president roles across four continents, growing digital sales 28–53% and EBITDA 5–7%.
- Founded HotelTrip.com, BackyardTravel.com and VisaLuxuryHotels.com, the last on a fifteen-year deal forecast at $30 million per annum.
- Led eight-figure deployments for InterContinental Hotels Group USA and Golden Tulip UK on Opera PMS and Micros.
- 1997–2003, hotel operations: Assistant Director, Front Office at Westin Hotels, then Director, Front Office at Hyatt Hotels.
Boards and advisory
Expertise
Education
Recognition & patents
Contact
For board mandates, advisory work, speaking invitations or a conversation about experience, loyalty and payments in the Middle East — the quickest route is email or LinkedIn.