Faisal Alshawa

Faisal Alshawa is a performance nutrition practitioner with a strong academic grounding in sport and exercise science, paired with wide-ranging applied experience across elite football and athlete support. He completed an MSc in Sports and Exercise Science at Loughborough University (2012–2013) after earning BA & BS degrees in Economics and Kinesiology from the University of Maryland (2008–2012), a combination that reflects both analytical and human-performance foundations.

Professionally, Alshawa is now based in Dubai and works at the intersection of health, technology, and consumer product leadership as a Senior Product Manager at Beyond ONE (October 2025–present), following a role as Product Manager at HungerStation (February 2024–October 2025) and a period as Senior Product Manager at Calo Inc. (February 2023–December 2023). Earlier, he founded kayam (June 2017–February 2023), initially rooted in nutrition consultancy before evolving into a subscription-based personalised nutrition coaching app designed to improve daily accountability and adherence. The venture ultimately exited via an acquihire, after scaling customer growth and revenue through product-led iteration, feature development, and improved retention.

Alongside this product pathway, Alshawa’s applied sport background includes consultancy and embedded roles in professional football. He served as Sports Nutritionist at Aspetar – Orthopedic and Sports Medicine Hospital in Doha (August 2014–September 2017), delivering performance nutrition support to national football programmes (including U17, U19, and Olympic U23 squads) and other Olympic-sport athletes. His work covered dietary analysis, body composition and energy balance monitoring, individual counselling across hydration, recovery, travel and supplementation, and the translation of research into practical protocols in collaboration with coaching, medical, physiology and strength and conditioning staff. He later worked as a Sports Nutrition Consultant at NK Lokomotiva (August 2018–May 2019), supporting both first team and academy players through 1-to-1 consultation, team education, and ongoing remote follow-up to drive performance and recovery behaviours.

Earlier in his career, he also gained experience in performance operations through a season in Major League Soccer as a Performance Analyst (Volunteer) at Real Salt Lake (March 2014–October 2014), where he helped quantify team and individual training loads using the Adidas MiCoach Elite system and reported insights to the strength and conditioning staff in support of acute–chronic load tracking approaches.

Beyond applied work in clubs and institutes, Alshawa is also an author. His book, Fill Your Mind Before You Fill Your Plate (October 2019), centres on building sustainable health habits through mindfulness and mindset-based strategies, translating lessons from both personal experience and professional practice supporting athletes and high-performing individuals.

Academic institution: Loughborough University; University of Maryland
Practical affiliation (current & previous): Beyond ONE; HungerStation; Calo Inc.; kayam; NK Lokomotiva; Aspetar; Real Salt Lake; Nottingham Forest FC; Quorn FC; AC Milan Academy
Languages spoken: English, Arabic
Content feature: Maximising nutrition through injury
Area: Nutrition