Speaker details

Biography

Professor Nadine Debbas Achkar is a Chartered Arbitrator with a distinguished practice in international arbitration. She serves primarily as an arbitrator and has been appointed as Presiding Arbitrator, Sole Arbitrator, and Co-Arbitrator in numerous high-value and complex disputes under leading institutional rules as well as ad hoc proceedings (including under the UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules). Nadine is a Member of the International Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) (2024-2027) and of the ICC Commission on Arbitration & ADR. She previously served as Co-Chair of the ICC Advanced Arbitration Academy – Middle East (2024-2025). She is also a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (CIArb) and a member of the Editorial Board of the journal Arbitration (2025-2028). In January 2022, Nadine was appointed by Royal Decree as a Judge on the Supreme Court of the Kingdom of Bahrain. Earlier in her career, from 2008 to 2011, Nadine served as General Counsel and Senior Vice President of Abu Dhabi Basic Industries Corporation PJSC, an industrial investment holding company mandated by the Abu Dhabi Government to be a key contributor to Abu Dhabi’s Economic Vision 2030. Nadine is also active in academia. She serves as a Visiting Professor at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD), where she has taught International Commercial Arbitration for over five years. She has also taught Business Law at the American University of Beirut (AUB) and International Business Law within the Executive MBA core curriculum at the École Supérieure des Affaires (ESA), affiliated with ESCP Europe. Nadine holds a Juris Doctor from Columbia University School of Law and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Georgetown University. She is admitted to the New York Bar and is a native speaker of Arabic, English, and French, and is fluent in Spanish. Nadine is a frequent speaker at leading international conferences on arbitration and dispute resolution.