Kyndryl’s new regional chief will focus on modernizing mission-critical environments and helping enterprises scale AI securely
Kyndryl has appointed Maged Wassim as Vice President and Managing Director for the Middle East and Africa, placing experienced enterprise technology leadership at the centre of its regional growth and transformation strategy.
Wassim will lead Kyndryl’s MEA business as organizations increasingly move from experimentation with AI toward enterprise-wide deployment. His mandate will include strengthening customer and partner relationships while helping organizations modernize mission-critical technology environments and prepare their operating models, skills and data foundations for AI.
The appointment comes as enterprises across the region increasingly combine cloud modernization, data platforms and agentic AI to improve competitiveness and resilience. For CIOs, however, scaling AI is becoming less about individual use cases and more about whether existing infrastructure can support secure, governed and measurable transformation.
“Organizations across the region are moving decisively from AI adoption to enterprise-wide transformation. The opportunity now is to make AI a core driver of business performance.” — Maged Wassim, Vice President and Managing Director, Middle East and Africa, Kyndryl
Wassim joins Kyndryl from Cognizant, where he served as Vice President for the Middle East market. He previously held a technology leadership role with a major regional retailer, overseeing technology strategy and large-scale transformation initiatives and gaining experience across both technology operations and business outcomes.
His career also includes two decades at IBM, where he held several leadership positions, including Vice President, IBM Cloud and Cognitive Software. There, he worked with organizations on cloud adoption, data, AI and technology-led innovation.
Wassim’s appointment signals Kyndryl’s intent to position infrastructure modernization as a strategic prerequisite for AI adoption. The immediate challenge will be helping MEA enterprises translate growing AI ambition into scalable architectures, stronger capabilities and measurable business value.
