Amal Dokhan

Amal’s career started with her passion and love for education, since it a remains a valuable asset in life. Having spent more than 10 years in the industry, she decided it to review her future and decided to do something completely different and out of her comfort zone.

“We are always prone to believe that we can only have one career path in our lifetime but changing experiences and exploring different career paths was the biggest eye opener for me to discover my skills and capabilities and how a person can simply transform everyday with the knowledge added and our choice in how to apply it”, Amal commented.

She pursued her Master’s degree in Strategic Marketing at the University of Wollongong in Dubai (UOWD), which turned out to fit in perfectly with her career dreams. She has been involved in many ventures and initiatives around the globe since she graduated and described her experience at UOWD as a turning point in her life. The practical hands-on experience and research opportunities such as the Dubai Shopping Festival, other internships, support from the academics and input from her highly professional classmates provided her with a solid foundation to start the next chapter in her career.

Amal also stated that the nature of the degree has helped her to bridge the gap of implementation due to the practical interactions they had with industries throughout her degree.

“I have worked in early education, media and production, events management, hospitality, automobile, publishing, startup funding and entrepreneurship with all its areas (managing startup accelerators, running hackathons, teaching and coaching in corporate innovation programs, lecturing in entrepreneurship and technology innovation) and today I can see how all of that simply connects through the knowledge I gained in my studies”.

As Managing Director of Babson Global for Entrepreneurial Leadership and the Director of Venture Lab at Mohammed Bin Salman College, Amal believes that her success is due to three reasons: the excellent team she is working with that, according to her, makes the impossible easier to achieve; entrepreneurs that come up with endless, inspiring ideas; and following industry trends in order to stay ahead of the game.

Prior to her current role, Amal started a company which lead her to her passion of turning ideas into ventures. From there she joined King Abdullah University of Science and Technology and worked in seed funding technology startups after which she moved to the Entrepreneurship Center where she worked with hundreds of startups and companies in the field of entrepreneurship and Innovation.

When she does have a free minute to spare, she enjoys watching entrepreneurial videos, relax with a great book, explore new places and meet and network with people.