Naila is the Operations Director at RIA. She is responsible for developing institutional and research operational systems and processes to ensure effective strategic planning and implementation. As a Project Manager, she oversees all ongoing grants and projects at RIA. She develops systems to ensure the timely execution of individual research projects, adherence to budget parameters, and appropriate allocation of projects to researchers.
Before joining RIA, Naila worked at Frost&Sullivan as a Senior Industry Analyst for the ICT sector. Naila worked on projects that focused on ICT market analysis and sizing, competitive and strategic analysis, market entry strategies, commercial due diligence, and analysis of regulatory frameworks. She completed a project highlighting the regulatory changes in the South African ICT landscape while determining opportunities for communication service providers. Other projects included 5G Opportunities for the Middle East Region, the objective of which was to highlight the critical use cases that could benefit from a 5G network; African ICT Infrastructure Evolution, which provided a deeper understanding of the leading trends in the fibre, data centre and tower markets across South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and Tanzania. This project also entailed the development of an infrastructure investment model to understand the magnitude of funds required to increase connectivity reach. Naila is fluent in English, Portuguese and Gujarati.
