Noura: ADIA operates global mandates, so having a diverse workforce is very important in ensuring it executes on its strategy. And the same thing is either happening or is going to happen with the energy and political research teams. In my area of economics, we have research notes that are circulated, and regular sessions with presentations from the team that anyone can attend. How do we collaborate? We’ve put in place or contribute to a number of forums that bring different groups of people together. Jean Francois: In the global research function, our mandate is exactly about that. We have global and regional weekly meetings, so whether it’s from the CFO function or the financial, investment or research side of things, we all get together in a room and regularly meet and discuss different viewpoints. Shabanah: This is an important point because there is a lot to learn from being around colleagues with such deep expertise, as well as different and interesting backgrounds. But through my experience in the HR Department I decided that I really preferred dealing with the human part. After joining ADIA, I got my Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, partly because I thought I might want to move into an investment role at some point. But I had heard of ADIA, and the people around me pushed me forward to find out more and see where it would take me. I was born and raised in the Western region of Abu Dhabi, which is a remote area, and I wasn’t really interested in working in a city at the time.
I joined at the end of April 2008 from the Environment Agency in Abu Dhabi, having graduated with a diploma from the higher colleges of technology. They spoke about the range of transactions, geographies, asset classes, and then explained that I would be in more of a hybrid legal / risk / commercial role – it was such a fantastic opportunity that I just couldn’t say no.Īhmed: Well, I’m a bit of a different story I’d say. The role complemented what I was already doing at GE but with more variety.
I’ve been in the legal profession for 15 years focusing on finance and real estate finance, so when the head hunter called and described the opportunity to work at ADIA in the European Real Estate Department, it was almost too good to be true. Shabanah: I joined in 2015 from London, where I was working at GE Capital Real Estate, as Legal Counsel, advising the platform on the equity book, loan origination and restructuring. And this was behind its decision to create a global and cross-asset research function to develop robust top-down views to support decision making. And the answers that I got consistently were very clear: this serious commitment to constantly benchmark ADIA against best practices among the top asset managers of the world. One of the main questions I had was around why ADIA wanted to bring in an economist like me. My first reaction to the idea of joining ADIA was a positive one. I joined from Goldman Sachs in London, but I’ve worked in various roles in different countries, including for the IMF in Washington DC, and also in Africa, advising the government of Rwanda, my country of birth. Jean Francois: I’ve been at ADIA for just over a year now, as Head of Economic Analysis. So this gave me a strong feeling that ADIA was a place where there was a career path and it was possible to develop yourself.
Many of the UAE’s leaders either worked at ADIA at some point or were on one of its scholarships. I also consulted with my father at the time, and he encouraged me to join ADIA because of its reputation and history. It has an embedded social responsibility to contribute to future generations. But the second reason was honestly that the mission of ADIA is something I’m really proud of and want to be part of. I knew I wanted to be in finance, so my natural instinct was to look for the best place to be in the investment universe, which, for me, was ADIA. Noura: I joined ADIA as a fresh graduate from Zayed University in May 2008, just before the financial crisis.
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