Naeema Zarif is a strategist working at the intersection of international relations, collective intelligence, and human-centered innovation. For over a decade, she has helped governments, international organizations, and civil society navigate complexity, not by chasing technological change, but by re-imagining how people, institutions, and ideas connect across borders.
As the founder of The Fifth Corp, Naeema leads an evolving inquiry into how societies can collaborate more ethically and sustainably in an interconnected world. Her work explores the balance between governance and imagination; how new paradigms of leadership, participation, and shared responsibility can reshape the future of global cooperation.
A Shift from Digital Transformation to Human Transformation
Naeema’s early career in the private sector taught her how systems of communication shape perception and power. Yet, what began as a focus on digital transformation and engagement became a deeper study of how meaning is created, and how institutions can listen and adapt in times of uncertainty.
Her work in the non-profit and public sectors, particularly as the Arab World Public Lead and Regional Coordinator for Creative Commons, brought this inquiry into practice. There, she helped cultivate regional and global frameworks for open knowledge and equitable access, working alongside educators, policymakers, and activists to build cultures of collaboration grounded in trust and shared purpose.
The Fifth Corp: A Laboratory for Global Foresight and Cooperation
Founded in 2016, The Fifth Corp operates less as a consultancy and more as a strategic collective, one that helps organizations see beyond the urgency of digital transformation to the deeper shifts in how societies relate and organize.
The work spans from advising governments on participatory policy design and digital governance ethics, to helping multilateral bodies imagine new models of cross-border cooperation. Each initiative begins with a simple premise: that sustainable global progress depends on empathy, inclusion, and the ability to act collectively across ideological, cultural, and technological divides.
Rather than prescribing strategies, The Fifth Corp helps its partners hold space for reflection, to see systems as living, interdependent organisms rather than mechanisms to be optimized.
Political Imagination and the Practice of Global Belonging
Naeema’s approach to international relations centers on the idea that diplomacy, at its core, is a practice of empathy, a continuous act of learning how to share the planet. Her work challenges the assumption that innovation must be technological, inviting instead a return to relational intelligence: the capacity of communities and institutions to build trust and co-create meaning.
Through research, dialogue, and strategic foresight, she works with leaders and policymakers to design frameworks that restore balance between progress and presence, between the acceleration of change and the wisdom of collective restraint.
Learning as a Way of Leading
For Naeema, leadership is an act of service; a practice rooted in humility, awareness, and devotion to something greater than the self. Her approach is shaped by the principles of mystic Sufism and other contemplative traditions that see the world as an interconnected whole, where inner transformation and collective harmony are inseparable.
Drawing from the rhythms of nature and the wisdom of ecological systems, she sees governance and collaboration as living practices, ones that, like sustainable farming or balanced ecosystems, require patience, stewardship, and care. This perspective guides her belief that effective leadership begins with listening: to people, to place, and to the unseen patterns that bind them together.
Her travels and cross-cultural work have deepened her conviction that the future of international relations lies not in dominance or control, but in presence, in the courage to act with compassion, to honor difference, and to serve the shared good. Through this lens, Naeema approaches strategy as both a spiritual and civic responsibility: a way of cultivating conditions where understanding, trust, and renewal can thrive.
Through her collaborations with organizations such as UNESCO, Swedish Institute, Qatar Foundation, IWPR, Hivos, and multiple international and governmental bodies, Naeema has helped shape strategic approaches that bridge policy, ethics, and participation.
Her philosophy is rooted in a simple but transformative idea: that technology and diplomacy alike must be in service of humanity, not as a symbolic gesture, but as a systemic commitment to equity, transparency, and shared stewardship of our collective future.