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My guest on this episode is Jehane Noujaim, a multi-award-winning director from the world of documentary film-making, specifically, the cinema verité genre. Jehane has captured the zeitgeist time and time again in her work. She’s the engine behind such well-known documentaries as Startup .com (2001) and Control Room (2004). More recent films include The Square (2014), the Great Hack (2019) which is available on Netflix, and the series The Vow on HBO, all produced in collaboration with her husband, Karim Amer.

Thanks to our partners Marakez for sponsoring this episode. Marakez is the leading mixed-used developer in Egypt, with an ever growing portfolio of commercial and residential projects.

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My guest today is Samih Sawiris, the founder of Orascom Development Holding which operates 33 hotels with over 7,000 rooms and controls approximately 100 million sqm of land. He is perhaps best known as the person behind El Gouna, a tourist resort town on the Red Sea coast of Egypt. Samih is above all, a sort of renaissance man, and a person who doesn’t define himself by his career or profession. He has a multitude of interests and he consciously prioritises the work / life balance. Now that he is no longer involved in the day-to-day running of the company, he is spending time developing his passions and checking off his extensive bucket list. Our interview was recorded at the end of 2020. If you’re enjoying the show, leave us a review in Apple Podcasts, or reach out to us on Instagram.

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I’m joined on the show today by Jalal Abu Ghazaleh & Dalia Sultan, the husband-and-wife team behind Gourmet Egypt, a company that has raised the bar for food retail in Egypt. Join our conversation to hear about their pivot points — from the cute way they met to the challenges they encountered in the evolution of their business. The conversation blends the personal and professional and we meander down memory lane to key cross-roads along their path.

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My guest on the inaugural episode of What I Did Next is Ahmed Alfi, a well-known name in the tech start-up world in both Egypt and the Middle East. From starting his career on Wall Street, Ahmed moved to Egypt in 2006, went on to co-found Sawari Ventures and is also the co-founder of Flat6Labs and the Greek Campus, a startup innovation hub in downtown Cairo. Tune in to the episode to find out all about those turning points in Ahmed’s life, who he’s inspired by, and what makes him tick.

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What I did Next is a show that will explore life’s pivot points, both professional and personal. We’ll look at life’s journeys through this lens and how sometimes certain circumstances can lead to life-altering changes. Season One launches February 4, 2021 with a fantastic mix of guests from the Middle East who share their pivot points. Do you take the left or right at the fork in the road? Do you choose the path less traveled and go against what is expected? These are the big questions at the heart of this show—questions that inform and shape our lives and the paths we take. The people I’ll be interviewing will either be from the Middle East or have a connection to the region in some way. These are people who are multi-national, multi-lingual, are engaged, curious and passionate about knowledge and aim to leave a positive imprint on the world. They represent a variety of industries and careers but they all have one thing in common: they aren’t afraid to do it their way.

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