Global Residency Update Part 2: Our team and our presentation

Happy April, everyone! In Part 2 of the Global Residency Update Series, here is a bit more about the project experience, starting with...

Our team, plus our professor, the one-and-only Jean-Francois Seznec!

Professional-looking group, no? Obviously, that is me at the far left, along with Patrick, Prof. Seznec, Suvo, and Oscar outside of our hotel, the Al Murooj Rotana, right before we left for our presentation. We were fortunate in a sense that our client scheduled our final presentation on the Monday of residency week, so we were able to get our core responsibility out of the way and spend Tuesday through Friday taking in the rest of the program company visits and get some sight-seeing in as well. Unfortunately, I cannot tell you much about our client, aside from that we were working in the financial services industry and examining market entry elsewhere in the Middle East and Central Asia. Our client's office was located in the DIFC (Dubai International Financial Centre); here is one of the fantastic views of the city from the office:

Our presentation went reasonably well (I hope!) over lunch with a number of senior executives at the client firm. Following our presentation, we were invited to coffee with a member of the human resources team and had an interesting discussion about recruiting into financial services and getting younger people to move to Dubai. Personally, while I had a great experience in Dubai, I am not entirely sure how all of the folks I met are able to do it - there is certainly a lot to learn and fun to be had, but I think that it would feel a bit isolated after a while. That being said, for anyone interested in working in that part of the world, there are some 800 companies in the DIFC that are all probably hiring!

Following all company presentations, we invited all of the clients to our hotel Thursday evening for a closing reception. We were pleasantly surprised to have a few Georgetown (McDonough School of Business and School of Foreign Service) alums join us, which of course meant taking them out for an after-party. Do not worry; we kept things fairly tame, because we had a full day of sight-seeing planned by the school the next day, including dune-bashing and a Bedouin dinner in the desert!

Dubai Residency: Success! Cheers!