Professional Summary
I am a strategic foresight advisor and sociological researcher with 17 years' consulting experience in the Middle East's emerging technology, advanced sciences, energy and public sector innovation spaces. I combine my management consulting background with strategic foresight methodologies and sociological training to navigate complex, ambiguous futures for organizations and societies.
My perspective on technology's role in shaping our world challenges the premises of technological innovation and its relationship to power, agency, and collective well-being: technology is not a neutral tool, but a deeply social phenomenon embedded in complex historical, cultural, and institutional contexts. Currently, I am a PhD Candidate in Sociology at George Mason University, exploring the democratization of digital resources (data and infrastructure) to build community wealth.
Professional Experience
George Mason University | Fairfax, VA
Researcher | 08/2021 – present
Researcher, Next System Studies at Center for Social Science Research (2022 - Present): Project Manager, Digital Commonwealth Project .
Program Coordinator, Arlington Fellows Programs (2023-2024): Instructor, GLOA 495 / GOVT 496 – Global Politics Fellows Internship .
Graduate Teaching Assistant (Spring 2022): Digital Technologies, Knowledge Production and Society .
Graduate Research Assistant (2021–2022): Institute for Immigration Research .
tenten100 (Qahwa Management Consulting) | Dubai, UAE
Founder and Managing Director | 11/2015 – present
Strategic foresight advisor on public sector innovation.
tenten100's focus currently is on the broader digital economy, with particular attention to telecommunications, internet, and media.
Global Electric Vehicle Road Trip (EVRT) | Dubai, UAE
Strategy Director | 06/2016 – 06/2017
EVRT (now Vuka Mobility) is an events start-up accelerating electric vehicle adoption.
My remit included business set-up, concept creation, UAE country management, strategy and communications.
Tetra Tech | Dubai, UAE
Principal | 08/2012 – 07/2015
Tetra Tech is a global, NASDAQ listed engineering and consulting firm, focused on the Energy, Water, Environment and Public Infrastructure sectors.
I worked with the management consulting division, advising energy sector investors, operators and regulators in the MENA region.
TCO Management Consulting | Dubai, UAE
Consultant | 06/2008 – 06/2012
TCO was a start-up incubated by Dubai Government, focused on delivering advisory services (strategy and policy, performance, capability development) to Middle East public sector institutions and state-owned organizations.
I worked in the Economy practice: strategic challenges to national competitiveness.
The Executive Council, Government of Dubai | Dubai, UAE
Analyst | 12/2007 – 06/2008
TEC functions as a classical Cabinet Office, setting the strategy and sector priorities for Dubai Government entities.
I worked on institutional reforms in the Health and Social Development sectors.
Education
PhD Candidate, Sociology
George Mason University
08/2020 – Present | Fairfax, Virginia
Expected graduation: 2025
Research Focus | Digital globalization: a sociology of digital technology, its potentials for democratization, and the production of value through community stewardship.
Dissertation (in progress): "Community-Owned Digital Resources: Experiments to Democratize ‘Data Relations’ for Community Wealth."
I explore the community-led stewardship of digital resources — platforms, data, and infrastructures — by analyzing over 50 global cases of “democratic experiments with technology” (digital cooperatives, data sovereignty initiatives, and peer production systems). For example, from my research emerges the possibility that communities democratize digital governance through what I term "community intelligence" frameworks; I have developed analytical tools for understanding how technological design can either reinforce or transform power relations.
Fellowships and Awards:
Institute for a Sustainable Earth – Systems of Sustainable Consumption and Production (Summer 2022)
AI and Technology Policy (Summer 2023)
The Democracy Collaborative's Next System Movement Lab (February 2024)
Center for Humanities Research Doctoral Fellowship (Summer 2025)
Mason Trailblazer Award (April 2025)
Bachelor of Science, Human Biology and Bioethics
University of Toronto
2004 – 2007 | Toronto, Canada
Program Focus | A Life Sciences program focused on genetics, molecular biology, global health, health policy and medical ethics.
Presentations and Publications
Paper presented at Business Perspectives on Corporate Accountability for Human and Environmental Rights Violations, National University of Political Studies and Public Administration in Bucharest, Romania, March 2025: "Democratizing Digital Futures: Community-Led Initiatives as Models of Corporate Accountability in the Platform Economy."
Comprises my initial dissertation findings, demonstrating how alternative accountability models emerge from grassroots technological innovation rather than top-down regulations and policy.
Draft paper (for inclusion as a chapter in an edited volume titled Just Business: Can Corporate Accountability Democratize the Economy?)
Deepak, D and Manski, B. 2025. "Coding the Future: Digital Technologists and the Constitution of the Next System." Frontiers in Sociology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2025.1362848
This paper examines how technologists function as constitutional authors, embedding democratic principles directly into digital infrastructures.
To be presented at the upcoming American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, on August 11 2025, in a discussion on Political Economy of the World-System
A workshop-specific version of this material was presented at the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics Annual Conference on July 22nd 2023 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Computational Social Science research produced for the Institute for Immigration Research (2021-2022): "Understanding Voluntary Migration Decision-Making and Consequences with Agent Based Modelling: Computing migration between Asia and North America as a complex social, cognitive and planned behavior."
Paper presented for the workshop on Popular Constitutionalism Beyond the Nation State at Law & Society Association Annual Meeting, June 2024: "Digital Constitutionalism and the Constitutive Powers of Digital Technology."
My Substack - a writing project alongside my dissertation work titled Open Wafers.
Key posts:
Introducing Open Wafers: Exploring Technology, Society, and Power
Data is Power, Not Property: Moving from Ownership to Relationships
Beyond Federal vs. State: The Missing Voices in America's AI Policy Interventions