TJS Strengthens Management
August 2008
Dubai, 24 August 2008- TJS (The Jewelry Store), a Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC) company specializing in technology and services for monitoring high value inventories, announced the appointment of Gabriel Nasser as Chief Executive Officer. Nasser, who was previously holding the position of IT Director, is the technological expert behind TJS’s groundbreaking model for financing gold jewelry, based on using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology. The appointment is part of TJS’s restructuring and repositioning as a technology services provider. The company also appointed Johnny Hazboun as Chief Business and Marketing Officer whose brief will be to drive TJS’s repositioning and market expansion.
As one of TJS’s first executives, Gabriel Nasser helped launch the company in 2005. He was instrumental in transforming TJS from proof-of-concept to a viable business. Under his technological leadership, TJS has implemented the world’s largest RFID jewelry deployment thus far and has established an innovative financing model for gold jewelry, which minimizes exposure to the international gold price fluctuations, something seen as a major improvement in the industry.
Prior to TJS, Nasser worked at OATSystems, Inc., a pioneering RFID solutions provider, since its founding in 2001 in Boston, and was involved in several global roll outs in RFID including at The Gillette Company, Target Corporation, and Tesco Stores Ltd . He co-authored and co-developed EPCGlobal's initial EPC-IS reference implementation which is now the global standard for EPC data and communication. Gabriel Nasser holds a B.A. and an M.A. in Computer Science from Boston University and is an editor for The RFID Society.
Johnny Hazboun brings over 12 years of experience in strategic marketing and product deployment in the IT and Healthcare industries in both the Middle East and the United States. Before joining TJS, Hazboun served as head of marketing at Imperial College London Diabetes Centre (ICLDC) in Abu Dhabi, where he helped bring the center from zero patients to full capacity. At ICLDC Hazboun conducted the largest diabetes awareness campaign in the UAE thus far, a campaign which was awarded for ‘Best use of Public Relations’ at the Gulf Marketing Review Effectiveness in Marketing Awards (GEMAS) 2008.
In early 2005, Hazboun was contracted by a US firm, on behalf of the Jordanian Army, to deploy the first WiMax based network in the region. Before moving to the Middle East, Johnny served as Director of Marketing at EnviroSystems, a bio-tech products manufacture in Silicon Valley, California where he successfully introduced three of its products throughout the United States. Johnny Hazboun holds a Bachelor of Science from San Francisco State University.