About
What STL is, how it publishes, and who writes it.
STL is a think tank in motion. Each edition takes one question shaping the Kingdom's next decade and works it to a defensible view: researched from within, benchmarked against the world, and written to be argued with in boardrooms.
It publishes two kinds of edition. Articles take one question and hold one position. STL Conversations put leaders on the record about what transformation demands of them. The series began in November 2025 and reaches its readers through a LinkedIn newsletter and this site.
Mansoor S. Almalki
Founder and editor
Prof. Mansoor S. Almalki is a strategy consultant and board member who has spent more than fifteen years leading change inside institutions: first in higher education, then across corporate governance, AI readiness and national transformation. STL is where that experience becomes published thinking, a research and development practice and a think tank by design, built to put Saudi ideas in front of decision makers at home and abroad.
The story begins in the lecture hall in 2014, when he returned with his doctorate to teach applied linguistics. Between 2017 and 2021 he was dean of supportive studies and director of an English language centre serving 25,000 students a year, where he learned that scale is a design question before it is a budget question. From 2021 to 2023, as a university vice president for development and quality, and as acting vice president of educational affairs, he led strategic planning across 28 colleges and headed its Vision Realization Office. The two roles, held together, gave him a practical and detailed view of how a large institution actually moves, in the years when Vision 2030 stopped being a document and became a daily operating discipline. From 2023 to 2025 he sat on a university board of trustees and saw the same questions from the governance side.
Since 2024 he has worked on both sides of the table: as a senior consultant in strategy and business development for an international education group, and as director of language testing at a national language academy. Alongside these he advises education institutions and investors on strategy and growth, designs and delivers executive learning and development, with more than fifty programmes since 2018, and works on capacity building and on the UN Sustainable Development Goals as they apply to education.
He holds a PhD in applied linguistics from the University of Melbourne, was appointed professor in the field in 2024, holds an MA in TESOL and a BA in English, and began an EMBA in 2026. He is a member of the Institute of Directors (IoD), where he earned the Certificate in Company Direction in 2025, and of the World Economic Forum. He sits on advisory councils at a number of universities, is a certified accreditation reviewer, and serves on the board of a national TESOL association.
Founding STL was the natural next step: a place to test what he had seen inside institutions against what the world knows, and to publish the result.
For advisory, speaking or board enquiries, reach him on LinkedIn.