Aleksandra Krajewska

Aleksandra Krajewska has managed the Strategy and Planning function at RAKBANK (National Bank of Ras Al Khaimah, PJSC) for the past two years, where she is responsible for strategy and planning in retail banking development. When she took on the position, her main goal was to restore profitability and digitize quickly.
Already in her first year of work, this goal was achieved. At the same time, she successfully implemented the digitization plan. The percentage of customers opening accounts digitally rose from 0% to 80%, an impressive result in such a short period of time.
In addition to restoring profitability and digitizing retail banking, Aleksandra also achieved a number of other successes over the past two years: digitizing the credit card sales process; developing payment strategies; developing Skiply, an app for educational payments; introducing a sales performance monitoring programme; and developing products to support “green transformation,” which doubled sales of “green mortgages” granted for the purchase of energy-efficient real estate in 2023.

In 2022, Aleksandra completed the Aspiring Directors Programme at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, which is part of her development path toward becoming a board member of a Polish or international organization.
From 2018 to 2022, she served as a Director in the Corporate Strategy Team of First Abu Dhabi Bank, the largest bank in the United Arab Emirates and the second largest on the Gulf. She offered advice to its Management Board and the Supervisory Board on strategic decisions for the bank and the local financial ecosystem.

From 2016 to 2018, Aleksandra was one of the authors of the success of the Emirates Islamic Bank, the fastest growing Islamic bank in the UAE, which also made her a specialist in the field of Islamic banking. In 2018, she was responsible for projects that increased the bank's net profit by AED 200 million. In 2018, she completed a management programme for outstanding managers at the Emirates Islamic Bank.

She has been involved in banking since graduation, when she started a management programme at Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt am Main. She has continued to develop, mainly through project work, and thanks to frequent changes in markets (UK, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Poland). As a result, she learned how diverse a business can be in different cultural and economic conditions and how to manage it. She has always tried to be close to and understand the teams she worked with, including by learning more languages. In the Emirates, she was one of the few European executives to learn Arabic. In addition, she speaks English, Polish, German and Spanish. 
In March 2020, Dziennik Rzeczpospolita daily selected Aleksandra Krajewska to be one of 10 female Rising Stars of Business.
After graduating from SGH and despite numerous moves, she still stays in touch with the School. She is a member of the Institute of Social and Economic Studies (ISES), an association of former members of the Student's Association for Finance and Macroeconomics, promoting economic knowledge and supporting younger colleagues in their development.
In terms of social activism, it is close to her heart to support women in achieving the professional goals they set for themselves. For this reason, in 2020, she created the Polish BusinessWomen Network UAE & GCC in Dubai (PBWN), a unique organization in the Middle East – a network of Polish-speaking women professionals professionally active in the Middle East. Its mission is to allow Polish women to support each other in their professional development, grow their businesses and ventures in this dynamic region. For the past four years, PBWN has been the only professional Polish organization in the UAE. Currently, the Polish BusinessWomen Network UAE & GCC has more than 60 permanent members and represents more than 20 different sectors. There are now 40 candidates undergoing the recruitment process.
The network is a platform for sharing knowledge, experience and inspiration. It also provides a valuable source of support for Polish women who want to develop their careers and businesses in the Middle East.