Navigating complexity from the street to the boardroom
Azal Advisors is a lean, independent advisory firm built on a simple conviction: that the questions facing sovereign and institutional decision-makers are too important to answer from a desk. We bring together prominent senior advisors including leading academics, former officials and practitioners from well beyond the Western mainstream, with on the ground presence in the places that matter. The founder’s two decades in management consulting shape how the work is done: framing the real question, building the structure to answer it, and driving to conclusions a decision-maker can act on.
OUR PHILOSOPHY
CLIENT FIRST PRINCIPLES
Azal Advisors is a one stop shop for multi-domain expertise, diversity of perspective, intellectual rigour and structured strategic insight. We deliver efficiently, focusing on what truly matters, with full cost transparency.
Independent
We are not affiliated with any political principal or institution, or aligned with a preferred world view. On every mandate, Azal incorporates multiple independent expert perspectives and lets the evidence speak — convergences and divergences alike. Clients receive the full picture, not a view filtered through institutional or political orthodoxy.
Accountable
Large organisations dilute accountability and distance senior expertise from client work. At Azal, a principal is accountable, and selected subject matter experts are the team. We don’t engage in work we can’t confidently deliver.
Discreet
We give the utmost importance to our clients’ confidentiality requirements, operating with strict rules, procedures, and platforms.
Lean by design
Every engagement deploys only the effort that is actually required, privileging expertise. No padding. No expensive offices or additional overhead that require cost recovery. No unnecessary deliverables.
WHO WE ARE
DELIVERY TEAM
Azal Advisors has a layered structure modeled around our clients’ needs. A principal leads, structures and coordinates engagements; a group of prominent and diverse senior advisors from academia, think tanks and ex government provide strategic perspective; and a network of analysts and relationships on the ground provide firsthand insight through privileged conversations with decision-makers and informed actors.
CONSULTING LEAD
Nicolas Dunais
Founder & Principal
Nicolas has two decades’ experience living and working across the Middle East, South Asia, and Eastern Europe, studying Arabic in Sana’a and Persian in Tehran, consulting for state-owned and private enterprises in Afghanistan and Sudan, and advising governments across the Arabian Peninsula. Nicolas founded Azal Advisors on a conviction that the most valuable insight comes from the combination of true subject matter expertise, trusted relationships, and the discipline to structure it for decision-makers. Before Azal Advisors, Nicolas was Regional Director at the Tony Blair Institute, building government advisory programmes across the Balkans and Eastern Europe. Prior to that, he was a Principal at Oliver Wyman, leading public sector projects for senior government clients across the Gulf.
SENIOR ADVISORS
Azal Advisors works with a network of trusted senior advisors who have a proven track record in providing diverse and unique perspectives on critical policy topics and are recognized for their expertise. Collectively, they are the heart of Azal Advisors’ proposition, and bound by strict confidentiality clauses. Their expertise spans geopolitics, energy, economics and security, and include faculty from leading international universities and think tanks, former government officials, and regional practitioners with decades of direct engagement in the countries we cover. Senior Advisors have been deliberately selected to include perspectives that mainstream advisory tends to overlook, so as to articulate how a policy decision looks from the perspective of Beijing, Brussels, Islamabad, New Delhi, Paris, Riyadh, Tehran, or Washington.
A sample of our senior advisors appear below.
Dr Steffen Hertog
London School of Economics
Steffen Hertog is Professor in Comparative Politics and an expert in GCC public sector reform. Steffen’s main interest lies in Gulf and Middle East political economy, with a specific focus on the political economy of public sectors, state-business relations and labour markets.
Dr Bernard Haykel
Princeton University
Bernard Haykel is a professor of Near-Eastern Studies at Princeton University. He specializes in the socio-political dynamics, history and identity – including the role of religion – of GCC countries and in particular Saudi Arabia.
Confidential
Confidential
Director of a think tank focusing on Russian foreign policy, implications for Russian domestic policy of the war on Ukraine, and the Sino-Russia relationship.
Dr Adel Bakawan
French Institute of Int’l Relations
Adel Bakawan is an Associate Research Fellow at the French Institute of International Relations’ Turkey/Middle East Program and the Director of the French research on Irak. He has an extensive knowledge of the social, economic and political dynamics of Iraq and Kurdistan.
Dr Naseef Naeem
Candid Foundation
Dr. Naseef Naeem is an expert on Syria, and a lawyer and expert on state, constitution, administration, political mediation, judicial reform, and conflict resolution in the Arab world. In 2025 he was the Head of a Syria needs assessment task force.
Kate Dourian
Energy Institute
Kate has more than 30 years of experience in MENA energy markets, having held multiple roles with Platts and the International Energy Agency. She is currently a board member at the Energy Institute Middle East Branch.
David Rundell
Former US State Dept
David Rundell is one of America’s foremost experts on Saudi Arabia. He served as an American diplomat at the Embassy in Riyadh and the Consulates in Jeddah and Dhahran. He is the author of “Vision or Mirage, Saudi Arabia at the Crossroads”.
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Former State Minister from Pakistan with international development finance institution and proximity to investment landscape. Leads a regional economic forum in Pakistan.
Dr Mohammed AlSudairi
KFCRIS
Dr. Mohammed Al-Sudairi’s research focuses on the historical and contemporary connections between the Middle East and East Asia. He is the Head of the Asian Studies Unit at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies (KFCRIS), and a Humboldt Fellow.
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Expert on Iran, the Gulf and Middle East security issues. Teaches at SAIS Europe and is the Iran lead at a prominent think tank, focusing on future trends in Iran’s domestic and foreign policy.
Dr Ding Long
Shanghai University
Professor Long is is the Vice Director and a Professor at the Middle East Studies Institute, at the Shanghai International Studies University. Ding
Long’s research deals with Middle Eastern Politics and China’s perspective.
Gautam Chikermane
Observer Research Foundation
Gautam Chikermane is the Vice President at Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi. His primary area of research is the economy and politics of India. He also tracks the international economic affairs, particularly the G20 nations.
SUBJECT MATTER EXPERTS & ON-THE-GROUND NETWORK
Azal Advisors draws on a network of several dozen subject matter experts, analysts and relationships across its geographic footprint. Complementing our senior advisor and consulting layers, this network is activated on a needs basis, and provides critical perspective on political dynamics and socioeconomic affairs that published sources cannot capture, either directly, or through its relationships to senior government and private sector officials. The network is continuously expanding.
CONFIDENTIALITY
SECURE PROTOCOLS AND PLATFORMS
Azal Advisors does not discuss, reference, or disclose client relationships. Every expert engaged on a mandate operates under a framework agreement that includes strict confidentiality obligations. Information is shared on a need-to-know basis only. No individual involved in a mandate handles information beyond what their specific role requires. We take information security seriously as a matter of firm architecture, not as an afterthought. The following measures are standard across all engagements:
Encrypted communications
Information compartmentalisation
Swiss-hosted infrastructure
Azal Advisor’s web and data infrastructure is hosted in Switzerland, under Swiss privacy law, one of the most protective frameworks for data confidentiality in the world.
Project-specific email addresses
Experts engaged on a mandate are provided with a dedicated Azal email address for the duration of the engagement. No external personal or institutional email addresses are used for client work.