Dubai : Come Saturday, more than 12,000 people will hear Laila Al Yousuf give her graduation speech at the Staples Centre, a sports arena in Los Angeles, where the famous Lakers basketball team has played.
Laila, of Emirati-American heritage, will be receiving an Associate of Arts degree from the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising (FIDM) in Los Angeles. She is the second interior design student from the institute to be named valedictorian in a while.
She is also a candidate for the Sally Sirkin Lewis Interior Design Award, an honour given by the designer to an outstanding student who demonstrates creativity and innovation in projects.
Move to the United States
Although born in the United States, Laila grew up with her family in Dubai and attended Emirates International School from 1991-2001.
At 16, she moved to the United States where she completed her last year of high school. She then attended the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill in 2002 and received her bachelor's degree from the university's Kenan-Flagler Business School four years ago. Her university education was funded by the Shaikh Mohammad EDAAD Scholarship Programme. The scholarship is aimed at UAE nationals, sponsoring recipients enrolled at top-ranking universities worldwide.
After getting her business degree from UNC, Laila moved to California where she worked briefly in sales. It was there that she realised she was "missing out on the creativity energy".
"I felt like I was being starved a bit," she said, explaining why she enrolled in the interior design programme at FIDM, which she completed in December 2009. Laila said she has always loved interior design and added that the people in the UAE are "blessed with the design and architecture" they have in the country.
Laila will move back to Dubai at the end of this month. She hopes to find a full-time job in the commercial field with a design firm. Eventually, she aims to start up her own design firm that she hopes will become global.
Apart from wanting to build a design domain within the country and internationally, the 25-year-old also wants to continue with activities she started long ago.
She's actively involved in volunteer work and does not want to stop when she returns to Dubai.
Changing stereotypes
Being of mixed heritage and the ensuing perceptions of other people are major concerns for Laila. She is part of a Facebook group "where people like me help each other out with the different challenges we face, because there's a negative stigma about Emiratis with mixed heritage".
She wants stories of UAE nationals like her to be recorded and exposed to the public so that people can engage and interact with them. She said she wants the group "to be a resource for the other people like [her]".
Another goal of hers is to give back to the community by having her own personal scholarship to help people continue their education".
The writer is a mass communication major at the American University of Sharjah.
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