Dr. BarkathunnishaAbu Bakar

I turn tourism strategy into something a destination can actually execute.

Most destinations don't fail for want of a strategy — they fail in the gap between the document and the delivery. That gap is where I work. Over 25 years I've moved between three vantage points that rarely sit in one person: the consultancy room, where masterplans get written; the operator's desk, where I carried P&L, marketing and HR responsibility in the travel trade; and the lecture theatre, where the next generation of the workforce is formed.

That combination is why governments and boards bring me in. I've developed Bhutan's 10-year integrated tourism masterplan on regenerative principles, sat on the advisory committee for the Western Cape Tourism Masterplan, built ecotourism frameworks for Brunei's Ministry of Tourism, and designed the GSTC certification training that helped position Singapore as a sustainable tourism leader.

Alongside the consulting work I founded World Women Tourism and host Women We Watch in Tourism, the first global podcast series profiling women leaders in the sector — because a destination strategy that ignores half its workforce isn't a strategy.