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Everything Is an Optimisation Problem — Including Your CX StrategyWith Mohamed Soliman, Regional VP at Energy Exemplar
What if the same algorithm running thousand-node energy grids is the one quietly running every customer experience strategy too — whether we name it that way or not?
In this episode, Dr. Eslam Afifi sits down with Mohamed Soliman — the strategist behind Energy Exemplar's scale-up from $300K to over $10M in ARR and its A$1.6B acquisition — to strip optimisation down to its first principles and show why it belongs at the centre of how every CX leader thinks.
Mohamed has spent two decades modelling some of the most complex decision systems in industry — from the digital infrastructure underpinning the GCC's regional grid, to advising sovereign funds, regulators, and policymakers across 28+ countries. In this conversation, he translates that experience into language CX leaders can act on Monday morning.
What you'll take away from this episode:
· Why optimisation is not a technical concept — it's a universal decision system every leader is already running, just not deliberately
· The three foundation layers of trust — data, methodology, governance — that have to be verified before you trust any number a model gives you
· Why AI hallucinations sound more confident than the truth, and what that means for CX teams deploying AI into customer journeys
· The shift from consumer to prosumer — and why your customers are no longer just on the receiving end of experience, but active producers of value back into your business
· How to stop choosing between resilience and efficiency in CX, and start treating the trade-off as the optimisation problem it actually is
· The one principle that should anchor every CX strategy — start from the vision, not the data
Whether you lead CX, design customer journeys, build AI-enabled experiences, or sit at the strategy table watching the same trade-offs come up week after week, this episode gives you a sharper lens for thinking about the problem and a cleaner framework for solving it.
About the guest
Mohamed Soliman is the Regional Vice President at Energy Exemplar, one of the world's leading platforms for energy market modelling and optimisation. With a foundation in electrical and digital control engineering from Cairo University, an MBA, and a DBA, Mohamed has spent two decades operating at the intersection of strategic vision and commercial reality — scaling regional businesses, leading the GCCIA Interconnection Program that built the digital backbone of the GCC's regional grid, and driving a 12x revenue transformation at Siemens. Across 28+ countries, he has built a reputation as a trusted advisor to sovereign funds, regulators, and policymakers — known for unlocking deals where strategic insight has to meet commercial realism.
About the host
Dr. Eslam Afifi is the host of The CX Algorithm — a podcast for leaders who want to move beyond CX hype and treat customer experience as a deliberately designed system of people, process, technology, and data. Eslam is the CX, Data & Insights Senior Manager at Acenda (MLC Life) and Executive Director at World Journeys, with a PhD in Human-Centered Design & AI and an EMBA from IE University. Across his career, he has led CX transformation programs grounded in structured thinking, customer co-design, and the kind of clarity that turns complexity into action. The CX Algorithm brings that same clarity to every episode — built around a single landing idea, with no filler, no hype, and no surface-level CX thinking.
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