With fifteen years in the media industry under my belt, I’ve worked on all sides of the media game and gained cross disciplinary experience on a global scale. Starting my career as an economic and political journalist in Palestine, writing in both English and Arabic, I quickly learned the ropes and freelanced for international news agencies such as Reuters, Associated Press (AP) and Bloomberg. I did some work for the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) where for the period between January and August 1999, I wrote and edited the ‘Occupied Territories’ country report, a quarterly economic and political review of the situation there at the time.

The World Bank, International Finance Corporation (IFC) and USAID were major accounts I worked on where for the World Bank, I was contracted to manage the media and publicity campaigns for the Mediterranean Development Forum (MDF) held in Morocco in 1997 and 1998. For the IFC, I was working, on a project basis, for their information gathering and analysis unit in Ramallah, Palestine. The Municipality Empowerment program, a USAID Democracy and Development project was another major project where I was tasked with attending and documenting the meetings between USAID representatives and Palestinian Authority officials to finalize voting processes, procedures and security arrangements for the first Palestinian Municipal elections.

Returning to Dubai where I grew up, I joined Microsoft Gulf and Eastern Mediterranean (GEM) as public relations manager responsible for all media relations and external affairs activities, plans and budgets across the region which included the Gulf Cooperation Council countries (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Kingdom of Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, the Levant (Jordan, Lebanon and Syria), Egypt in North Africa, Cyprus, Malta and Pakistan.

During my tenure at Microsoft, I was responsible for the launch of Microsoft Windows 2000 server product in the Middle East, as well as Windows Millennium (ME), Office 2000, Office XP and MSN Arabia.

Working closely with partners on the enterprise level and the SMB level, I was responsible for all external marketing initiatives, managed of all corporate and product messaging either directly with the media or through channel partners. On the corporate social responsibility side, I set up and developed the Microsoft Electronic Library (MEL) project, which aimed at bridging the digital divide between young school children in impoverished areas. This was achieved by building electronic libraries where children, as part of their school curriculum, would visit and learn how to use the Internet. The project was initiated in Beirut, Lebanon in April 2000, and has now branches in Amman – Jordan, Muscat – Oman and Karachi – Pakistan.

I left Microsoft in 2002 to start up THECONTENT|FACTORY (The Content Factory), which started out as a specialized media relations agency at the core, with a heavy emphasis on content generation for marketing purposes. The company focused on media relations and corporate communications requirements across a wide spectrum of economic sectors: technology, real estate, banking and finance amongst others.

Driven by client demand, which quickly grew from purely media relations work to a wider range of requirements such as design, events and media buying, THECONTENT|FACTORY today offers integrated marketing service to a select range of clients, built on a solid digital foundation.

Education
Bachelor’s Degree in Economics (concentration in Development Economics and Third World Policy Issues), with a Minor in History from the College of Arts and Sciences – Virginia Tech State University, Blacksburg – Virginia (VA).