Who attends

Experience

As a mid-career professional, we are who we are because of our accumulated experiences. Early on in my career, I realised that my learnings and experiences were limited to the environment I worked in and came to a conclusion that I wanted a more global experience; I wanted to learn from the best. Coming from a technology and finance background, pre-MBA was a trial and error phase that gave me the opportunity to get hands-on experience and build hard skills that enabled me to figure out where my passion is and my calling. To me that wasn’t really enough because my calling was not easy to achieve; I wanted to understand my knowledge of global best practices and figure out the best way to manage my career going forward.

LBS was a natural aspiration destination that I felt necessary to fill in the next chapter of my journey. It gave me a chance to put frameworks to many of my learnings in a scientific and practical way that is relevant to current and future best practice. It broadened my mindset beyond the limited environment I had previously worked in. The EMBA programme gave me a chance to learn from top academics and faculty, whether it was classroom engagements, from my peer group, or extra-curricular activities with the many interest-clubs I was a part of.

Today marks almost a decade after completing my EMBA at LBS and I can confidently connect the dots of the past 10 years and tell you that 90% of my plans have become a reality. My startup back then (Talabat) sold to venture capital company, Rocket Internet. In 2013, I started an SMEs agency in Kuwait (The National Fund for SMEs Development) with a national mandate to develop the entrepreneurial ecosystem, by improving the business working environment and providing capacity building and funding programmes for entrepreneurs. In 2017 I co-founded a VC fund with the aim of fueling Arab innovation (Faith Capital), as well as founded and continue to lead the preferred online flowers and gifts destination in the MENA region (Floward).

I am grateful for the opportunity I had with LBS, and am very fortunate to have accomplished the above in the past 10 years and can’t wait for the next chapter of my journey.

Experience

My reason for enrolling in the EMBA programme was simply to build skills for success and increase my business knowledge yet the friendships and working relationships fostered have proven invaluable over the years after leaving the corporate world and starting my entrepreneurial journey of founding and leading two separate businesses.

I was working in real estate and construction during my studies and post-graduation. It was a tough industry at the time due to the global real estate crisis and I spent most of that stint doing damage control. However, I believe the skillset I gained from my time at LBS allowed me to better manage stakeholder relationships from a difficult macro situation.

Three years after completing the programme, I decided it was time to pursue my ambition of re-entering the Food and Beverage industry, where I had initially started my career after university in the US. In 2015 I founded Foodie Brands which is focused on catering; online sales of meal plans and desserts, and B2B/private-label food production, through various subsidiaries and joint ventures. Revenues grew at a compound annual rate of 60% during the first 5 years, and still managed to grow 27% during 2020, although not without the incredibly difficult challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic that most, if not all businesses, faced last year.

In 2019 I took on the role of Chairman and left the day-to-day management at Foodie Brands so I could co-found iKcon as COO with my friend and fellow LBS EMBA alumnus, Khalid Baareh, who serves as our CEO. iKcon is proudly now a leader in the nascent cloud kitchen-as-a-service industry, where we provide brand partners the full stack of operations to extend their delivery reach. We now employ more than 750 people in the UAE & Saudi Arabia with further regional expansion plans. We are fortunate to have recruited an incredibly talented and driven team who inspire me every day.

I am eternally grateful for the decision I made to attend LBS and excitedly looking forward to the journey ahead.

Experience

I climbed up the work hierarchy ladder relatively fast compared to my peers, where my first Managing Director/CEO position was at the age of 32; quite young for an Egyptian female. I went through significant challenges to prove my capabilities regardless of my age and gender. The Executive MBA represented for me, my “40’s” sprint. I enrolled on the EMBA Dubai 2019 class at the age of 41 and I held the position of Chief Investment Officer of Naeem Holding Group for Financial Investments and I was also the CEO of the Asset Management and Investment Banking subsidiary.

The journey was challenging yet exciting, sliding back into studying and assignments submission mode was tough in the beginning. Given my work schedule and my own work travel requirements, that was further added to by the EMBA travel requirements, I felt I was juggling a thousand things at a time, yet it all seemed to fall into place within the first three months. The classroom experience was enriching given the diversity of the programme and the superb quality of the professors and guest speakers. I had to pull long sleepless nights at times, which was made easier by the support of my family and fellow classmates. I made new friendships that I cherish a lot and had an amazing time in the capstone trip.

Towards the end of the programme I was promoted to Group Deputy CEO, overseeing the MENA region, in addition to being given the chairwoman title in the asset management and Investment banking subsidiary. I continue to serve on multiple boards of directors in investment companies, real estate companies and in June 2021 I was appointed as independent board member in a multinational pharmaceutical company, outside my employer group.