Dr. Meera AlRaeesi has been recognized with a 2025 Global Recognition Award for her work in establishing a project management office within the UAE Ministry of Health and Prevention. The dentist-turned-healthcare administrator built a comprehensive portfolio management framework from scratch, creating what may serve as a blueprint for government healthcare entities across the region. The Global Recognition Awards evaluated Dr. AlRaeesi using the Rasch model, which creates a linear measurement scale that allows for precise comparisons between applicants across different categories of excellence.

Dr. AlRaeesi’s journey from clinical dentistry to directing a federal project management office reflects an unconventional career path that has proven uniquely suited to the challenges she faced. Her background in patient-centric care shaped her approach to organizational change, prioritizing people over processes throughout the implementation. She pursued a master’s in healthcare management. She gained experience in healthcare consultancy, managing multi-year, multi-site projects that required balancing strict compliance requirements with the realities of overburdened healthcare staff.

The Ministry of Health and Prevention tasked Dr. AlRaeesi with creating a project management office despite her lack of formal management experience, betting on her demonstrated ability to navigate complex healthcare projects. She immediately immersed herself in project management literature, studying frameworks from PMI and other industry leaders while simultaneously learning the ministry’s existing processes and organizational culture. This dual approach allowed her to ground the new office in international standards while ensuring it remained practical for the specific context of a federal healthcare entity.

Building From Ground Zero

Dr. AlRaeesi faced a challenge with no documented precedent: projectizing a government healthcare entity within a federal system. There were no templates to follow and no models to adapt wholesale, which meant that every principle and process required critical examination and reimagination to fit the ministry’s needs. She and her team drew from international standards, including PMI and ISO 21500, but the work represented genuine creation rather than implementation of existing frameworks. The foundation-building phase became an exercise in knowledge management, requiring dozens of meetings with staff across departments and organizational units where Dr. AlRaeesi could externalize tacit knowledge while building buy-in for the change. She leveraged the ministry’s existing expertise, recognizing that experienced teams had already developed their own project processes even if these weren’t uniform across the organization. The focus remained on engaging staff in co-creation rather than imposing solutions, which allowed the framework to reflect actual needs rather than theoretical ideals.

The resulting framework covered everything from macro-level portfolio management to micro-level project tools, including business cases, approval flows, procurement integration, detailed planning, execution monitoring, and documentation standards. Dr. AlRaeesi and her team designed a fully tailored project management system that would manage the complete portfolio while documenting everything for proper monitoring and performance management at all levels. They integrated the system with the ministry’s strategy management suite to enhance strategic alignment and continue to work on additional integrations, including risk and governance systems, as well as knowledge management repositories. The framework addressed not just what needed to happen but how it would happen within the specific constraints and opportunities of a federal healthcare ministry, which required constant attention to international best practices and local organizational realities. Dr. AlRaeesi understood that the system needed to support teams rather than burden them, so every element underwent scrutiny to ensure it added value rather than simply checking boxes. The co-creation process helped identify which aspects of international frameworks would translate well and which required substantial modification or replacement.

The Rollout Strategy

Dr. AlRaeesi rejected the typical top-down mandate approach common in government institutions, understanding it would amplify resistance and undermine adoption while engendering feelings of frustration and helplessness among teams. She secured buy-in from top management for a measured, phased rollout starting with a handful of ongoing projects, which proved crucial for working out real-world problems and gathering honest feedback. This pilot phase allowed her team to demonstrate the framework’s practical benefits to early adopters who became partners rather than subjects of change. The servant leadership principle from PMI literature resonated with Dr. AlRaeesi’s patient-centric healthcare training, leading her to prioritize listening, empathy, and empowerment throughout the process. Her team provided extensive training and coaching, actively inviting feedback and even volunteering direct support with paperwork and data entry to reduce the burden on department staff. The shared sense of ownership that developed often translated into genuine enthusiasm about the framework, especially when teams saw their input embedded in the system.

Following the success of the pilots, the team adopted a dual-track approach: onboarding departments through their ongoing projects while planning the upcoming year’s project portfolio. This strategy activated the framework for all new projects while methodically catching up with existing ones, using each as an opportunity to test the system, train staff, and spread awareness about what the project management office could offer. Dr. AlRaeesi made every department a partner in the process, which built trust and engagement that testify to the value of leading through support rather than direction. The approach required more time than a mandate would have, but it created sustainable change because people understood why they were adopting new practices and how those practices would help them succeed. Her team worked to ensure that resistance turned into collaboration, which happened when staff members recognized that the framework solved real problems they faced rather than adding bureaucratic layers. The dual-track method also allowed for continuous refinement based on feedback from new and ongoing projects, creating a virtuous cycle of improvement.

Final Words

The project management office has onboarded approximately 85 projects to date, achieving measurable improvements across the portfolio management lifecycle that include 100% early engagement of all involved departments in cross-departmental projects. The ministry has eliminated duplicated or redundant projects while significantly improving documentation quality, enhancing the potential for monitoring and cross-project learning throughout the organization. Dr. AlRaeesi views these results as just the beginning, envisioning the office as a catalyst for a sustainable cultural shift that will empower ministry teams to deliver greater outcomes for UAE citizens, while serving as a potential blueprint for other government healthcare entities.

Her work extends beyond the ministry’s walls because she believes the model can serve other organizations that face similar challenges in balancing international standards with local contexts. The goal involves contributing to the ministry’s growth and the broader advancement of healthcare governance across the UAE and beyond, which Dr. AlRaeesi pursues through careful documentation of approaches and lessons learned. “Dr. AlRaeesi has demonstrated exceptional leadership by building an entirely new organizational capability while maintaining the trust and engagement of teams throughout a major change,” said Alex Sterling, spokesperson for Global Recognition Awards. “Her ability to balance international standards with local context, and processes with people, represents world-class achievement in vision and execution.”