From 1998 to 1999, Al-Salem worked as an associate for A.T. Kearney Management Consulting in Moscow, Russia and Berlin, Germany, where he led consulting engagements in Russia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and the United States in market analysis, global benchmarking, and acquisition target identification. Moreover, he served as a trainer in the firm's Consulting Skills Training program. From 1999 to 2001, Al-Salem worked as a manager for KPMG Consulting in Washington, D.C., where he served as the project manager and senior advisor on engagements in Vietnam, Montenegro (former Yugoslavia) and Mongolia. Finally, from 2001 until his death, he worked as the Regional Director for Central Asia in the Business Advisory Services Programme of the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development. Here, he launched and directed a commercially-oriented consulting services provision program that assisted more than 1,000 enterprises in hiring local consultants in Central Asia to solve business problems. In 2011, the International Council of Management Consulting Institutes deemed Al-Salem’s work in Central Asia “commendable and of pioneering nature” and awarded him the honorable title Member of the Meridian Order. While studying at the Leningrad State University, Al-Salem met his wife, Viktoria Olskaia. They got married on May 23, 1992 and traveled the world working on various economic development projects. On January 16, 2000, their daughter, Anya Al-Salem, was born in Washington, D.C.  Al-Salem was an active mountaineer, skier, paragliding pilot, actor and musician. In 2002, he climbed the 7,010 meter mountain Khan Tengri. Moreover, he had over 150 hours of paragliding experience and competed in a number of paragliding competitions from 2005 to 2010. He was the first paragliding pilot to fly down from Talgar, a northern peak in the Tian Shan mountain range, after a multi-day ascent. In 2008, his writing on his experience paragliding over the Great Wall of China was published on the "Wing China" website and in the "Cross Country" magazine. On November 27, 2010, Al-Salem died in a paragliding accident on the northern slope of the Ushkonyr mountain in Almaty, Kazakhstan. He is buried in the Coronado Heights Cemetery near his hometown of Lindsborg, Kansas. After Al-Salem's death in 2010, his colleagues created the annual Gabriel Al-Salem Award for Excellence in Consulting in honor of his work.