James Bernard (Past Speaker)

James Bernard joined the DMCC in 2006 as the Associate Director of Commodities.

In 2009 he became Director of Business Development and now leads the development of DMCC Free Zone in Dubai which has attracted over 13,500 companies to the central Dubai location. James started his career in the London financial markets back in the early 1990s working for several leading financial institutions and trading houses before incorporating several of his own companies trading in physical commodities and derivatives.

As a Business Development and Marketing professional he has a comprehensive knowledge of all aspects of developing and growing companies and the business streams across a wide range of different industry sectors.

For the past seven years he has been responsible for driving growth at DMCC and combining marketing and sales techniques with relationship management skills, big data, advanced and predictive analytics, and data mining.

James leads the DMCC Blockchain Innovation Group and was one of the founding members of Dubai’s Global Blockchain Council.