Our Team
M. Ali F. Khan
Founding Partner (Emerging Governance)
Ali was called to the Bar of England and Wales in 2015, having studied Arabic and History at SOAS, University of London, where he presided over the SOAS Students’ Union executive body, after which he presided over the Middle Temple Students’ Association. His passion for designing human-centric governance models is very much attributed to these early experiences of attempting to achieve the complex balance of interests of multiple active stakeholders.
Having briefly worked as a journalist in Damascus, Syria, he joined DLA Piper in the cross-jurisdiction litigation team, and has been the founder of the Wasla Alternative Arab Music festival in Dubai, formed a private equity roll-up in the UK during Covid, and is currently a founding partner of AS Legal Constultants in Dubai where he acts as DeFi / Web3 and AI lead.
Ali works with multiple types of emerging technology companies, supporting projects from inception through to exit as legal counsel and NED. He commenced the web3 practise as a fractonalised legal counsel service for emerging projects, OTC desks, exchanges and corrollary service companies.
Ali regularly speaks on panels between Dubai and London on legal and regulatory matters, and is the founding co-chair of FinRegX (an informal body of DeFi operators, regulators, lawyers and inestors collecting together under Chatham House Rule to discuss the evolving cryptocurrency regulatory landscape), and a founding co-chair of the Institute of Directors web3 Special Interest Group (SIG).
Ali’s passion for governance stems from his experience developing effective leadership. He believes fundamentally in the role that healthy workplaces play in emotionally intelligent economies, and is committed to using technology to design more effective, laterlised ways of engaging stakeholders.
Faisal Ali Khan
Founding Partner (Corporate Governance)
Faisal graduated from Cambridge University with an MA in Engineering and spent the early part of his career working for IBM where he acquired deep technical and business insights into the Tech industry.
As a Technology Entrepreneur, he sat on the boards of a number of technology companies and successfully exited through trade sales.
Throughout his distinguished career as a Technology Entrepreneur, Faisal has focussed on the business and societal implications of technology rather than the technology itself.
Faisal is a qualified Chartered Director and through this discipline has become deeply immersed in the principles of Corporate Governance. He runs a quarterly Chartered Directors briefing workshops for all Chartered Directors to debate current governance topics.
As Chair South Institute of Directors, he works tirelessly to uphold its vision of the IoD being the professional institute for responsible directors and leaders. He is a firm advocate of the IoD mission to develop, support and represent skilled, knowledgeable, and responsible leaders for the benefit of the economy and society at large, sharing core values of Integrity and Enterprise. Faisal’s work supports the IoD’s study, research and development of the law and practice of Corporate Governance, and to publish, disseminate or otherwise make available the useful results of such study or research.
As Chair of the Institute of Directors Expert Advisory Group on Science, Innovation and Technology, Faisal brings together the extra-ordinary knowledge, experience, and skills of the committee to provide proactive advice to the IoD Policy & Governance Unit and to distil that knowledge for the benefit of the broader IoD membership.