Nominated by Brian Lott, chief communications officer, group communications, Mubadala
“Through his creativity, teamwork, and passion, Mohamed brought employees together through a beautifully executed video series of empathy and inclusion. His out-of-the-box thinking and high-quality video production skills engaged employees across the organisation by involving their stories as the core of the narrative. He delivered a high quality, unique, cinematographic-style series that showcased the power of exceptional videography.”
Career path
“My career journey started two years ago with Mubadala’s group communications team, and it’s been absolutely wonderful. I wear two hats: of internal and external corporate comms.”
“Untold Stories, an internal video series project I lead, won BroadCastPro2017. In 2014/2015 I was awarded Best Aspiring Filmmaker for my short film The Final Chapter at the Zayed University Middle East Film Festival. I gave a TEDx talk at the Canadian University Dubai, and was invited by Emirati women in leadership roles to give a speech on women’s empowerment. I also spoke at Tawteen 360.”
Guiding principles
Push the envelope of creativity. It’s OK to go crazy with your ideas, because that allows you to find something that works. If you don’t do that, you miss out on great ideas that make a difference.
Embrace storytelling. Telling and hearing stories is something that is engrained in our human DNA. Today it’s used in a gamut of multimedia platforms, from technology to social media to traditional media. Compelling stories make up our everyday lives.
Most importantly, I live by the rule of humanness and humanity; it’s so important to understand empathy, and the power in real human stories. I think everyone is a teacher – you learn different things from different people – so you ought to embrace the diversity of knowledge that is available to you. It also teaches you to be humble. You don’t know everything and, quiet frankly, you never will. But you’ll always learn something new everyday and that’s important: the constant evolution of oneself. However, I truly believe that the most influential teacher is my father, who always encouraged me to be creative, tell stories and embrace humanity with compassion and humility.