Mariya: How Curiosity Turned a Food Blog into a Career Behind the Camera
How Mariya turned a lockdown Instagram food blog into Reel Dynamics, a photography and videography practice working across Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
Shoayb Khattab: The Architect Who Found His True Perspective Through Photography
How Shoayb Khattab left full-time architecture for photography, then built an award-winning career documenting the Arab world’s buildings as visual storytelling.
Rihea Sadarangani: Building a Career Around Marketing, Community and Authentic Storytelling
How Rihea Sadarangani went from identifying as an introvert to speaking on stage, launching her own platform and uncovering Dubai’s offbeat food scene.
Inna Zubritskaya’s Journey: From a Career in Law to Building One of Abu Dhabi’s Largest Russian-Speaking Communities
How Inna Zubritskaya left a decade-long legal career, moved to Abu Dhabi and built a UAE travel media platform and one of the emirate’s largest Russian-speaking communities.
Badr Jafar: The UAE Industrialist Turning Gulf Business Into Global Philanthropy
A profile of Badr Jafar, CEO of Crescent Enterprises and President of Crescent Petroleum, UAE Special Envoy for Business and Philanthropy, and Gulftainer chairman.
Opinion: The Rise of Women Business Leaders in the GCC, Progress and Perspective
Opinion, Gulf Times NowThe narrative around women in GCC business has shifted more dramatically in the past five years than in the preceding fifty....
Reem Asaad: The Saudi Woman Who Changed Labour Law with Facebook, Then Built a Tech Leadership Career
In 2009, when a Saudi woman used Facebook to campaign against a retail labour regulation, the likelihood that it would change a decades-old national...
Nayla Al Khaja: The UAE’s First Female Filmmaker Who Put Emirati Cinema on Netflix
When Nayla Al Khaja decided to study film in Canada on a UAE government scholarship, cinema was not a profession that Emirati women were...
Jad Antoun: Fixing the Most Painful Transaction in the UAE, One Mortgage at a Time
Buying a home in Dubai is, by any objective measure, one of the most administratively intensive consumer experiences in a city famous for doing...
Nora Al Matrooshi: The UAE’s First Female Astronaut and the Mission That Goes Far Beyond Space
When Nora Al Matrooshi completed her NASA Astronaut Candidate Training Programme in 2024 and received her astronaut pin, becoming the UAE's first female astronaut...
Sky Kurtz: Growing Tomatoes in the Arabian Desert, How Pure Harvest Changed the GCC’s Food Security Story
The idea of growing fresh tomatoes in the middle of the Arabian desert, in temperatures that regularly exceed 45°C, sounds like an agricultural thought...
Mohamad Ballout: The Lebanese-American Who Turned Cloud Kitchens Into a SoftBank-Backed Global Empire
In January 2018, Mohamad Ballout and three co-founders launched a company with a premise that many in Dubai's restaurant industry considered absurd: instead of...
