After weeks of planning and preparation during the thick of Hilary term, on April 3rd fifteen MBA students arrived in Dubai for the Middle East student trek with the aim of learning about the region and exploring business and career opportunities. For the next five days we would meet eleven companies and government bodies and visit remarkable projects. This is a chronicle of these great days.

Day 1 (Sunday, April 4 th):
An early start as we headed to Abu Dhabi for our first meeting with the Abu Dhabi Health Council. The Abu Dhabi Health Council is responsible for providing full healthcare services to 1.9 million living in Abu Dhabi. Their CEO talked to us about the recent change that the council had gone through and their accomplishments as well as the challenges they face. It was a very enlightening talk about management in the Public Sector. After the meeting we headed back to Dubai to meet with Shell where we were met with SBS alumni Mehdi Chennoufi, General manager LNG Trading Middle East. The meeting started with a real case study of an oil refinery operation in an anonymous country. After that our host and his colleagues entertained us with some very exciting stories about their careers in Shell to give a us a taste of what it means to work for Shell. After the Shell meeting, we had a well deserved rest in the hotel before heading for night out in the city to explore some of its landmarks like Burj Khalifah, the tallest tower in the world standing at 808m and Dubai mall, the biggest mall in the world.

Day 2 (Monday April 5th)
Our first meeting for the day was with HSBC Bank Middle East. There we had a very insightful talk about HSBC’s operation in the middle east and their market and the way they implement their mission statement “your world’s local bank”. After HSBC we headed to the offices of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation. The Foundation was formed by an endowment from the ruler of Dubai HH Shiekh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum with the purpose of providing Arabs with opportunities to guide the region towards a knowledge economy through promoting entrepreneurship, research and innovation by enhancing access to quality education and professional development. During the meeting, we were briefed about the foundation’s strategy and programmes under Human Capital Development.
With end of our meetings agenda for the day, it was time again to relax and explore the city where we visited the Palm Jumairah Island (a man made island in the shape of a palm off the coast of Dubai) and the famous Burj Al Arab Hotel.

Day 3 (Tuesday, April 6th)
The day started with a visit to Unilever where we had a presentation about the company and the FMCG business in the Middle East. After the presentation we had a very exiting tour of their operations in Jabel Ali Industrial Area where we visited their factory for packaging their Lipton brand. It was interesting seeing first hand stuff we learned form the operations management course we took in Hillary term. After Unilver we had a meeting with the renowned management consulting firm. The Boston Consulting Group. The meeting was focused about learning about BCG and career opportunities in consulting as well as their view on the Middle East region given the work that they do in this part of the world.
After these two meetings we checked out from our hotel in Dubai and headed to Abu Dhabi to spend a couple of days.
Day 4 (Wednesday, April 7th)
Wednesday was dedicated to learn more about Abu Dhabi. And what better place to do that than the Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce and Industry. In their headquarters we had a very insightful talk about the economy of Abu Dhabi and the Abu Dhabi Economic vision 2030. After the talk we had a tour of the impressive one-stop shop where all the government agencies and ministries are in one place and business people can do all their transaction quickly and with ease. Abu Dhabi government 1 – Red tape bureaucracy 0.

After that we moved to the nearby tower that holds the headquarters of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world. We were led to a meeting room on the top floor where we were briefed on the investment strategy of ADIA. The views of Abu Dhabi from the meeting room were phenomenal.

After the our visit to ADIA, we headed out to Masdar City, the first zero-carbon, zero waste city ever to be built and haven for innovation in sustainability and renewable ebergy. There we had a presentation on the project and the milestones it had achieved so far.
With the meetings over for the day, we were all looking forward for the night, where the London Symphony Orchestra was playing in the Emirates palace with Sir Colin Davies at the helm performing Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique. We weren’t disappointed.