- Our Philosophy
About the Circle
A private circle for chief executives, built on trust rather than reach.
- Our Philosophy
About the Circle
A private circle for chief executives, built on trust rather than reach.
- One
- Story
Our Story
The Circle began as a standing invitation between a handful of chief executives who had run out of rooms in which they could speak plainly.
What began as an occasional dinner became a structure: pillars, councils, a framework of trust. That happened because the value turned out to sit in the regularity rather than the occasion. The form has changed a good deal since. The premise has not.
- Two
- Leadership
Leadership
The Circle is convened by a small group who hold its governance and decide who is invited to join.
Dr Essa Al-Ahmad
Founder
A physician turned leadership mentor, grounding the Circle’s guidance in resilience and sustainable performance.
Arshad Ali
Strategic Mentor & Transformation Specialist
A former global Pfizer executive, now advising CEOs on peer learning and high-performance leadership.
Cicero Carvalho
Senior Leadership Consultant & Master Coach
Founder of LeaderArt International, drawing on 25+ years in pharmaceutical leadership and executive coaching.
- Three
Our Purpose
To hold a room in which leadership can be discussed honestly.
The Circle exists to make candour ordinary between people who rarely encounter it. Everything else (the forums, the councils, the briefings) is built to serve that, and is dropped when it stops serving it.
- Four
Our Beliefs
Four convictions shape how the Circle works.
That counsel is worth more than advice. That a small room outperforms a large one. That confidence, once given, is absolute. And that a network is measured by the quality of a single introduction rather than the length of a list.
- Five
Our Mission
To be the room a chief executive keeps returning to.
Not the largest gathering in the calendar, nor the most visible. The one that proves useful enough to survive a tightening diary. The Circle would rather be indispensable to a few than familiar to many.
- Six
Our Vision
A standard for how senior leaders convene.
That private, considered, confidential conversation becomes the expectation at this level rather than the exception, and that the Circle is held as the reference for how such rooms are run.
- Seven
- Philosophy
Leadership Philosophy
“Capability, not just capital, will shape the future of Saudi Arabia.”
- Dr. Essa
Leadership at this level turns less on having answers than on the quality of the questions a person is willing to sit with. The Circle is built around that conviction, and everything in it follows from there.
- Eight
Who We Serve
Chief executives and chairs of established organisations.
Members carry final responsibility for an organisation of substance, the accountability that cannot be delegated to anyone else in the building. Sector, geography and scale vary widely across the membership. The seniority and the disposition do not.
- Nine
- Difference
Who We Serve
Four things the Circle does differently, and holds to when it would be easier not to.
- Closed by design
- Counsel, not content
- Confidence as the first term
- Built to compound
- Ten
- Begin
Request Membership Consideration
Membership in the CEO Elite Circle is by invitation and consideration only.
Tell us who you are and what you are working on. Someone from the Circle will read it, and you will hear back either way.