Hamda Al Qubaisi
Most organisations say they want more women in high-pressure technical roles. Few have honest answers when asked why the pipeline keeps thinning at the senior end. The harder question is what changes inside a team’s daily culture when the first woman walks in, and what it costs the person who does it.
Hamda Al Qubaisi is an Emirati F1 Academy driver and Red Bull Racing Academy programme member who speaks on what it takes to enter and hold ground in a male-coded, high-performance environment.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Hamda Al Qubaisi
- She is a working case study, not a retired one. She is still competing at the front of an international single-seater field, which gives her perspective on inclusion the credibility of present tense rather than retrospect.
- The credential is specific and verifiable: first woman to podium in Italian F4, third in the inaugural F1 Academy championship with MP Motorsport, Red Bull Academy programme driver. Audiences can place her without an introduction.
- She speaks from inside the Gulf, not about it. For organisations operating in the Middle East, or building gender strategies that have to work in the region, that vantage point is unusual on the international circuit.
- Her message is operational, not motivational. She addresses what funding, family backing, and team-level decisions actually made the difference, which is closer to what HR and DEI leads need than a generic empowerment talk.
Biography highlights
- Member of the Red Bull Academy Programme, representing Red Bull Racing in the 2024 F1 Academy season.
- Drove for MP Motorsport in the inaugural 2023 F1 Academy season, finishing third in the championship with four wins and seven podiums.
- First woman to score a podium in Italian F4, at Misano in 2021.
- First Emirati driver invited to the FIA CIK-FIA Karting Academy Trophy, in 2016.
- Featured by Nasdaq, Formula 1, Arab News, Goodwood, and Entrepreneur Middle East on women in motorsport and STEM.
- Ambassador for Abu Dhabi-based Yas Heat Racing; signed with AKCEL GP x PHM Racing for the 2025 F4 Middle East Championship.
Biography
Single-seater motorsport is one of the most consistently male environments in elite sport. The path through karting, regional Formula 4, and feeder series rewards drivers who have been visible to teams from childhood, which historically has not included girls from the Gulf. The arrival of a competitive Emirati woman in that pipeline is not a soft story about representation. It is a structural anomaly worth understanding.
Hamda Al Qubaisi entered Italian F4 in 2019 and in 2021 became the first woman to podium in the championship’s history, at Misano. She won three races on home soil in the F4 UAE series and built the record that earned her a seat with MP Motorsport for the inaugural F1 Academy season in 2023, where she finished third overall with four race wins and seven podiums.
The Red Bull Academy Programme signed her for 2024, putting her on the Red Bull Racing development pathway and giving her a commercial platform that few drivers, male or female, reach in their early twenties. She closed her two-year F1 Academy stint with two podiums in the final three races at Yas Marina, in front of a home crowd.
What makes her useful in a corporate setting is the specificity of her account. She has spoken publicly, including at Nasdaq MarketSite, about how partnerships, family backing, and access to machinery decide who actually makes it through, rather than the abstract language of empowerment. For audiences in the Gulf, or for organisations whose inclusion work has to function in that region, she offers a first-person view from inside the pipeline that is still being built.
Key speaking topics
- Women in male-coded high-performance environments
- Diversity and inclusion in motorsport and STEM
- Emirati and Gulf perspectives on women in sport
- Resilience and pressure management in elite competition
- Sponsorship, partnerships, and access in early careers
- Sustainable technology and the future of motorsport
Ideal for
- CHROs and DEI leads designing inclusion programmes for technical, engineering, or operational workforces
- Organisations with a Gulf footprint building gender strategies that have to function regionally
- Corporate sponsorship, partnership, and brand teams in motorsport, automotive, and STEM
- Women’s leadership networks and graduate audiences in engineering and high-performance disciplines
Audience outcomes
- A first-person view of what it takes for a woman to enter and hold a place in a male-coded technical field
- A clearer read on the Gulf context for women in sport, STEM, and competitive performance
- Specific examples of how sponsorship, family backing, and team decisions shape who progresses
- A working case for inclusion grounded in present-tense competition, not retrospective career story
- Honest framing of the pressure, scrutiny, and trade-offs that come with being the first or only in a room