Saif Al-Hajri

Dr Saif Ali Al-Hajri is a researcher, academic and ambassador for social responsibility, as well as a United Nations commissioner promoting the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. He helped establish Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development, served as its Vice-President, and helped found Qatar Academy, whose board he chaired.

He grew up in a traditional family of five children. His father enrolled him in boarding school in Doha, where distance from home taught him self-reliance and helped him excel academically from an early age.

His choice of geology expressed an attachment to Qatar’s land. He earned a bachelor’s degree in geology and marine sciences from Qatar University, followed by master’s and doctoral degrees in the same field from the University of South Carolina in the United States. A genuine love of the discipline became the basis for research, innovation and public service.

Sport developed a parallel set of values. He played football for seventeen years without receiving a caution or a dismissal, remained widely respected and continued to follow sport closely despite an increasingly demanding professional schedule.

His posts ranged from teaching assistant and lecturer in Qatar University’s Department of Geology to membership of the Permanent Committee for Environmental Protection and work as a director and expert at the General Authority for Youth and Sports. He helped establish Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development and served as its Vice-President.

He also helped found Qatar Academy and chaired its board, co-founded Qatar Leadership Academy and served as its board’s Vice-Chairman, founded Awsaj Academy and became Vice-Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar. His institutional work further included helping to establish Al Noor Institute for the Blind, where he was General Supervisor, founding the Qur’anic Botanic Garden and contributing to the creation of Qatar Music Academy and the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra, whose board he served as Vice-Chairman.

Geology led naturally to environmental service. He founded the Friends of the Environment Centre in 1990 and launched We All Love the Sea in 1991 and A Flower Each Spring in 1999. Further initiatives included the Green Tent, Friends of Nature, Qatar e-Nature, My Country’s Tree, My Country’s Bird, projects to document and classify Qatar’s birds and insects, Al Hima, Childhood and the Environment and Nature Protectors.

His work earned the Environmental Man award, presented by the late Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman, the Ford World Award in 2003 and the Grand Excellence Award in visual disability in 2008 for an invention designed for blind people. In 2015, President Omar Al-Bashir presented him with the Presidential Order of Merit, First Class, for social responsibility. Other recognition included the Best Mobile Government Service award for Qatar e-Nature, the 2019 Excellence in Community Partnership award and the Scientific Competence award from the International Union for Social Responsibility.

In 1982, after two years of proving his ability through practical teaching, he was appointed a teaching assistant in Qatar University’s Department of Geology and later became a lecturer. He considers his place on the founding team of Qatar Foundation a particular honour and served as Vice-Chairman of its board from 1995 to 2011.

Voluntary work has taken a substantial share of his time from the beginning of his career. Programmes, initiatives and events allowed him to translate ideas about social responsibility into direct work with communities.

That record was built through several tests. Early separation from his family required resilience. After secondary school, he received a scholarship to study architecture in the United States but was stopped at the airport because of his commitment to Qatar’s national football team. He was granted senior-employee status and permitted to study economics remotely at Cairo University until Qatar University opened, when he chose geology and marine sciences.

A later challenge arose when the Department of Geology nominated him as a teaching assistant but the university administration questioned whether a national-team footballer could fulfil the role. He volunteered to teach practical classes, demonstrated his academic and professional competence and secured the appointment two years later.