Her Excellency Shamma bint Suhail Faris Al Mazrui was appointed as the UAE’s Minister of State for Youth Affairs in February 2016 at the age of 22, making her the world’s youngest cabinet minister at the time of her appointment. H.E. Shamma is also the Chair of the Emirates Youth Council and the Vice-Chair of the Arab Youth Center. She serves as the Chairperson for Special Olympics UAE, and is a member of the Education and Human Resources Council of the UAE Cabinet, the UAE Golden Jubilee Committee, and a board member of Emirates Foundation and the International Institute of Tolerance.

Previously, H.E. Shamma worked in Private Equity at one of Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth funds. She also worked as a public policy analyst at the UAE Mission to the United Nations, as a Ministry Policy Analyst with the Prime Minister’s Office, as a Research Analyst at the UAE Embassy in DC, and as an Education Policy Researcher at Tamkeen (UAE Strategic Affairs Authority).

H.E. Shamma obtained her Masters of Public Policy with Distinction from the University of Oxford in 2015. She was also the first UAE Rhodes Scholar In 2018, listed in CNBC’s ‘7 Female Activists Under 23 Who Are Changing the World’, and awarded the NYU Making a Difference Award where completed her B.A. in Economics with a concentration in Finance at New York Abu Dhabi (2014). She has also completed coursework at the NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and lives in Abu Dhabi with her husband and their son Abdullah.