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Sidra Medicine, Doha, Qatar
Tamara Rida is the General Counsel and Secretary to the Board at the University of Doha for Science and Technology (UDST) in Doha, Qatar. She has held this position since August 2018, where she established and developed the university's Legal Affairs Department and provides legal and governance advice to senior management and institutional leadership.
Her responsibilities include advising UDST leadership on legal matters, developing and monitoring institutional governance policies, reviewing contracts and agreements, assessing legal and operational risks, maintaining compliance with applicable Qatari legislation and Ministry of Higher Education policies, and working with regulators, government representatives and external counsel. As Secretary to the Board, she also supports the planning and administration of Board and executive meetings, maintains institutional records, and communicates Board decisions to relevant stakeholders.
Rida holds a Bachelor's degree in Law from the University of Jordan, completed in 2007, and a Master's degree in Law from Duke University, completed in 2013. Her academic background combines legal practice with corporate governance and institutional leadership.
She is also a Solicitor of the Senior Courts of England and Wales, with her Law Society membership recorded from 2017, and is a member of the Jordanian Bar Association.
Before joining UDST, Rida worked across Jordan, Qatar, the United States and Austria in legal, policy and governance-related positions.
From 2017 to 2018, she served as a Senior Lawyer at United Development Company (UDC) in Doha, providing legal advice and conducting legal research and contract work.
She has also worked as an Attorney at Law with International Business Legal Associates (IBLAW) in Amman, advising on corporate and commercial matters, company formation, compliance, governance, mergers and acquisitions, project finance and contractual matters.
Earlier in her career, she was a Legal Advisor at the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL), where she conducted legal and policy research relating to civil-society organizations in the Middle East and North Africa. Her responsibilities included legal analysis, training programs for NGOs, lawyers and government officials, regional meetings and conferences, grant-related work, and preparation of legal and policy materials.
She also worked as a Lawyer/Partner at Saed Karajah & Associates in Amman and completed an internship with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Austria, where she contributed to legal research concerning implementation of the UN Convention against Corruption.
One notable recent contribution was her role in the 2024 agreement between Qatar's Ministry of Commerce and Industry and UDST to establish a Technology Support and Innovation Center at the university. Rida signed the agreement on behalf of UDST as General Counsel. The initiative was designed to support technological development, research, patent-information services and innovation, with collaboration involving national technology and innovation support networks and the World Intellectual Property Organization.
Although her primary profession is law and institutional governance, Rida is participating in healthcare education through Sidra Medicine's 6th Health Literacy Conference, scheduled for 3–4 October 2026.
Sidra Medicine lists her as a panelist in the session “Systematizing Health Literacy for Sustainable Impact.” The session examines how health literacy can be embedded into healthcare systems, policies and organizational practices and how collaboration, measurement and continuous improvement can sustain health-literacy initiatives.
Her participation is particularly relevant from a policy, governance and institutional perspective, complementing the clinical, nursing, pharmacy and patient-safety perspectives represented by the other panelists. This connection is an inference from the conference program and her professional role, rather than a claim that she practices clinically.
Sidra Medicine