Thamer Alharbi PRESIDENT, MICROSOFT ARABIA

What has the pandemic taught you about the industry and managing a crisis?

COVID-19 taught me the importance of driving team culture. Whenever possible, it is best to keep building team culture. Big onsite sales conference coming up? Start figuring out how to hold it virtually instead. And if it is time for your quarterly team building off-site, just go for it. Your team will be more than ready to share ideas and connect. The get-togethers that help drive team culture may seem challenging to pull off remotely at first, but it is worth the extra effort to keep everyone connected and move forward.

What resources have you offered to help fight COVID-19?

Given the global scale of the pandemic, Microsoft is working with health and technology partners to play a critical role in nearly every facet of addressing COVID-19. We are collaborating with nonprofits, governments, and academic researchers on solutions and bringing our experience to the table, providing access to Microsoft AI, technical experts, data scientists, and other resources. Whether it is providing virus researchers access to the world’s most powerful computer resources through the COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium or our interactive visualizations to track the scope of the virus, we are empowering researchers and organizations to solve this crisis in a timely fashion. Microsoft also launched an initiative to help 25 million people worldwide acquire the digital skills needed to thrive in a COVID-19 economy.