Elena Mate Mugica

Elena Maté Múgica is Head of Strategy & Solutions – Smart Infrastructure & Digital at BARC Solutions, where she leads strategy and growth for the firm’s digital advisory, digital masterplanning and smart city portfolio across the Middle East, Africa and Europe. Her focus is the gap where most digital and AI ambitions stall: the distance between what organisations commit to and what they can actually deliver, govern and operate at scale. Over seven years at Jacobs, most recently as Director of Digital & Data Strategy & Sales Operations, she grew the Middle East digital pipeline into a regional business line. She opened new revenue streams in AI, data, digital twins and OT cybersecurity, and standardised the pursuit governance that let them scale across EMEA and APAC. An architect and urban planner with an MSc in Smart Cities & Urban Analytics from UCL, Elena brings a systems view to transformation. She aligns policy, engineering and technology so that AI moves beyond