We’re currently on a season break and will be back with new episodes in March. In the meantime, I wanted to share my conversation with journalist and author Kim Ghattas. Kim, who is half Lebanese and half Dutch, shot to prominence as a BBC reporter, first covering Lebanon and then reporting on U.S. foreign policy from the United States. 

Lately, she has gained recognition as an author of bestselling books, The Secretary and Black Wave, a must-read for all those interested and concerned about Middle East politics. 

She unpacks what inspires her and more profoundly talks about the shadow that growing up in the Lebanese civil war still casts across her life and outlook. 

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Today’s episode is a deep-dive with our partners, EFG Holding. As a long-time sponsor of the show, EFG Holding have been avant-garde and frontier-breaking, keeping with their own ethos of being a trailblazing financial institution with a Universal Bank in Egypt and the leading investment bank in Frontier and Emerging Markets.

This week, I’m sitting down Aladdin El Afifi, CEO of EFG Finance, an EFG Holding company - EFG Holding’s Non-Bank Financial Institutions (NBFI) platform. I also speak to Mohamed Abou Basha, an MD and Head of Macroeconomic Analysis at EFG Hermes Research. We talk about their early career pivots, what brought them to EFG and how the company’s culture and values is at the foundation of their growth.

Thank you for joining me on this season of What I Did Next. We’ll be back with a new season in March. Until then, you can catch up on any episodes you’ve missed and also watch segments of our interviews by following us on YouTube.

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This week, I’m joined by the show’s producer, Chirag Desai, to look back at the highlights of our latest season, some common threads among our guests, as well as general insights from our recent conversations. We also discuss the issue of crisis management. This is a big picture conversation that impacts all of us and comes on the heels of discussions I've had recently with friends about concurrent crises happening around the world.

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My final guest of this season is the one-and-only Youssra, who tells me about her life’s journey from key decisions that led to her breakout success to her ground-breaking acting career that took on societal taboos. With over 80 movies, countless serials and theatre performances, her career has spanned seismic shifts in society, culture and politics, and she has witnessed, interpreted and contributed to all of them.  

Youssra is also a role model to younger actors and people in the industry and is often championing new talent in her films and TV work. What struck me most about her was her professionalism, her simplicity and how down-to-earth she is—there is no entourage, assistants, or arriving late.

My conversation with Youssra was recorded in September 2023 at our studio here in Cairo. If you’re a member of the show, we’ll have a bonus episode next week where Youssra shares her thoughts on the future of the Egyptian and regional film industries. 

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I’m joined this week by Ramy Adeeb, founder and Managing Partner of 1984 Ventures, a firm that specialises in providing seed funding to start-ups. Ramy’s is a quintessential What I Did Next story, he moved to Canada for high school, went on to have early jobs at Microsoft and then as an investor in Silicon Valley, before launching his own start-up, Snip.It, which was acquired by Yahoo in 2013. He tells me how important risk taking has been for his career, and how his life’s journey led him to the launch of his current company, 1984 ventures.

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In case you missed my conversation with fitness entrepreneur Amina Naguib, here’s a quick clip from our conversation. You can listen to the full episode in your podcast app, and we’ll have a bonus episode out for our members soon!

This episode was brought to you by:

EFG Holding, a trailblazing financial institution with a universal bank in Egypt and the leading investment bank franchise in frontier and emerging markets.

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I’m joined this week by Amina Naguib, fitness entrepreneur and founder of B-URN. Amina always wanted to explore the human body and health—she studied sports science in Washington and then physiotherapy in Amsterdam before returning to Egypt. With B-URN, she has created a community of people looking to improve their health and wellbeing.

Amina and I talk about how she’s been connecting the dots of her life, particularly a major pivot in 2020 that was also a pivotal moment for me. She’s a believer in each of us having the tools to better the quality of our lives — you just need to figure out how to unlock them. 

If you’re a member of the show, you’ll get a bonus episode with Amina next week where she talks about the intersection of exercise and physical therapy with happiness, and the B-URN community she continues to build.

This episode was brought to you by:

EFG Holding, a trailblazing financial institution with a universal bank in Egypt and the leading investment bank franchise in frontier and emerging markets.

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Mohammed Hefzy is the award-winning film producer behind mega hits such as Clash, Sheikh Jackson, Microphone, Paranormal, and Perfect Strangers, to name but a few of the films that make up his incredible catalogue of work. Hefzy began his career as a screen writer but made the transition to producing quite quickly, realising he wanted more control of the film-making process as a whole. This led to the formation of his company, The Film Clinic, where he not only develops his own movies but produces new and emerging talent as well.

Hefzy and I go way back to his pre-film industry days when we were both London-based. Meeting in a formal interview setting gave me a license to ask all my nerdy questions about the film industry that you can't get away with at a party! We’ll also have a bonus episode next week for members where he dives deeper into the writing process, and how different it is for him to produce other people’s work versus writing his own.

This episode is brought to you by:

EFG Holding, a trailblazing financial institution with a universal bank in Egypt and the leading investment bank franchise in frontier and emerging markets.

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I’m joined this week by Sir Magdi Yacoub, ground-breaking cardiologist and founder of the Chain of Hope charity. Professor Yacoub has almost single-handedly revolutionsed cardiology from his early days as a junior doctor in London in the 60’s, to retirement from his beloved NHS in 2001.

As someone who has been on my Top 10 list of dream guests since the show began three years ago, Professor Yacoub was a joy to interview and his breadth of his knowledge is incredible.

Today, Professor Yacoub dedicates his time to his Chain of Hope charity. His much-anticipated biography, A Surgeon and a Maverick: The Life and Pioneering Work of Magdy Yacoub is now available at AUC Press. He has pledged a percentage of the book royalties to the Magdi Yacoub Foundation in Cairo. You can find more information on both the foundation and the book in our show notes.

This episode was brought to you by:

EFG Holding, a trailblazing financial institution with a universal bank in Egypt and the leading investment bank franchise in frontier and emerging markets.

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I’m joined this week by curator Nadine Abdel Ghaffar, founder of Art d’Egypte. From humble beginnings in 2017, their annual event has become a celebration of art, installations and global partnerships. Nadine is also an art curator with a passion for one of Egypt’s most celebrated artists, Mohamed Nagy, and manages their art estate along with his family.

Nadine tells me how her childhood experiences led to her building a tremendously successful art platform and why her life’s mission is the development of all things culture.

Links:

This episode was brought to you by:

EFG Holding, a trailblazing financial institution with a universal bank in Egypt and the leading investment bank franchise in frontier and emerging markets.

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