Sonam Haider launches talent mobility boutique Aethra Advisory

Sonam Haider, an experienced leader in talent mobility, has launched her own consulting business in Dubai.

Open for business this month, Aethra Advisory is dedicated to helping organisations design global hiring infrastructure and mobility policies. The business supports UAE-based founders, HR leaders, scale-up operators, and strategic decision-makers expanding internationally, as well as global businesses entering the UAE market.

The firm’s key offerings include helping organisations develop global hiring policies, design immigration pathways, build mobility programmes, implement employment models, and ensure compliance with workforce policies and standards.

Founder Sonam Haider brings more than a decade of operator-side experience across global mobility, consulting, in-house leadership, and global employment platforms. She has previously led global mobility functions and held roles at PwC, Fragomen, Amazon, Uber, Deel, and Multiplier.

“What I kept seeing at every company, at every scale, was the same pattern. A hire is agreed. A relocation is planned. A market entry is decided. And then someone realises, far too late, that moving a foreign national across a border is not a simple yes-or-no question. It is a process.”

“Without the right infrastructure behind it, businesses lose momentum, candidates lose confidence, and the cost of fixing problems later is always higher than the cost of getting it right from the start. That is why I built Aethra.”

Haider said Aethra Advisory enters the market at a time of strong demand, with many employers entering new markets struggling to cope with the complexity around talent hiring, and streamlining their processes while living up to the high employee experience expectations of relocating talent.

“Many organisations still select Employer of Record (EOR) platforms, vendors, visa routes, or employment structures based on speed, only discovering compliance gaps, cost leakage, or operational limitations months later. At Aethra Advisory, we sit at the architecture stage, helping leaders gain an independent view before decisions become difficult and expensive to reverse.”

The talent mobility market

Globally, the cross-border workforce and migration solutions market is projected to reach $11.4 billion by 2033, growing at an annual rate of nearly 12%.

A few years ago, PwC offloaded its global mobility services business for $2.2 billion to a private equity firm.