From left (clockwise): Liyana D'Silva, Head of Media; Khushal Chawda, Head of Digital; Marwa Abdelsalam, Head of Social; Hisham Khattab, Senior Art Director.Crowd UAE, a global marketing communications agency, has restructured its boutique agency model in the UAE to adopt a specialised business unit (BU) structure.
The move is designed to future-proof client service excellence, ensure optimal operational speed, and accelerate the pursuit of ambitious scalability targets in the run-up to 2026 by operating at the intersection of AI and human creativity.
“Our agency has always delivered solid results, but to transform from a boutique into a truly scalable, high-performing enterprise, we recognised the opportunity to embed even greater focus,” said Tom Berne, Managing Director, Crowd UAE.
The agency is now organised around three commercially focused business units: Media, social media, and digital – each with dedicated strategy and delivery responsibilities.
This specialised framework has been designed to ensure the accurate and effective application of AI-driven tools and are centrally supported by a highly skilled Creative and Production Hub.
“This restructure is about optimising our operating model to seamlessly integrate proprietary AI tools, maximising our specialists’ capacity, and providing new levels of brand control, said Berne.
A central feature of the new model is the dual leadership within each BU: a Head of Department sets the strategy and manages the operational efficiency, while a Client Lead manages the relationship, ensuring seamless delivery and identifying growth opportunities.
As part of this restructure, four department heads have been appointed to lead the agency’s transformation.
Liyana D’Silva, the agency’s former Account Director now leads as Head of Media. Her mandate is to expand the Media unit’s market penetration and elevate performance standards, leveraging new efficiencies from automation.
Khushal Chawda has been promoted from Head of Development to Head of Digital following his achievements in client retention and successfully converting website customers into long-term SEO / GEO marketing partners. He leads the agency’s largest team and is responsible for ensuring technical delivery meets strategic client objectives.
Marwa Abdelsalam has been named Head of Social: Since joining in 2024, she has successfully rebuilt and grown the social media portfolio. Her experience, which spans delivering complex governmental-level social strategies to executing multi-market campaigns for global brands, is now central to scaling the Social Media unit.
Finally, Hisham Khattab joins as Senior Art Director. Leading the agency’s Creative Hub Khattab brings significant social-first agency experience to Crowd. The agency claims he has already made a profound impact on the creative output, ensuring the agency can rapidly pivot between large-scale brand activation ideas, content production, and designing highly engaging, performance-driven assets for media calendars.
“We are not just transforming our structure; we are establishing ourselves as growth partners for AI transformation, where human strategy unlocks competitive advantage on an international scale,” said Berne.
According to Crowd, the new operational structure is already yielding results, having recently secured several significant new accounts, with details to be announced shortly. The move aims to signal the agency’s intent to become a dominant, highly efficient, and scalable player in the regional market, poised to lead clients through their AI transformation journey.
