James started his career working for several leading international trading organizations as a commodities and financial derivatives trader in London, where he developed his passion for global trading. He then went on to incorporate his own company, investing in the production and trading of physical commodities and derivatives.
In 2006 he moved to Dubai to join DMCC as Associate director of commodities. Then in 2009 he was appointed Director of business development, leading the next stage of growth for DMCC Free Zone, which to date has attracted over 19,000 companies to its central Dubai location.
In his next role as Head of Corp Sales he helped successfully take DMCC onto achieve unprecedented growth and to develop it into the multi award winning Free Zone it is today. In 2020 he was appointed as DMCC’s official European representative.
As one of the founding members of the Dubai Global Blockchain Council and the DMCC Blockchain Innovation Group he has led DMCC’s Blockchain and Crypto initiatives since 2015, developing early proof of concepts across various sectors including the provenance of diamonds and various other internal projects.
Today he continues to drive the development of the DMCC Crypto ecosystem ‘Crypto Centre’ and to assist in the continuous growth of Dubai as a global Blockchain hub, working closely with the Securities & Commodities Authority (SCA) and contributing to the successful implementation of the recently announced final Crypto Asset regulations.
He is a regular speaker at global events and contributor to various publications including the latest Dubai Future Foundation Tokenisation and Digital Assets Report.
As an experienced Special Economic Zone professional he continues to work and advise on the development of Middle East start up ecosystems and has maintained a strong interest and involvement in the crypto and token economy, decentralized finance, and the underlying blockchain and dlt technologies.
