My story holds true with so many expats I have met over the course of my stay in the UAE. A background score that resonates across generations. I expected to be gone in 3 years.
Well, a quarter of a century has passed, and I’m still here – 22 of those years have been in Gulf News.
For perspective - Google was born after I became a journalist and started my career with the largest independent English daily in the UAE.
Gulf News has taught me, irrevocably, that readers are the reason we exist and transparent, ethical, accountable journalism is the only path to them.
I came wanting to ‘make a difference’ and Gulf News gave me the opportunity and space to achieve that. From daily beat reporting to launching the higher education news product targeting colleges and universities called Notes, to setting up the Readers Desk and driving community journalism, launching the tablet edition, creating the Social Media Team and reader-driven digital sections for gulfnews.com – my journey in the newsroom reflects the incredible evolution that is Gulf News as a media house. We have never had any other benchmark but ourselves and our drive for excellence. And 42 years of transformation is evidence of that core philosophy.
Gulf News has taught me, irrevocably, that readers are the reason we exist and transparent, ethical, accountable journalism is the only path to them. I had no major formal training in mass communication. I arrived with a degree steeped in New Age science, so I learnt everything that matters in my field, in Gulf News – in its newsroom.
In a sense it is my alma mater, its people my inspiration. We wear our hearts on our sleeve, we will fight the hardest for our readers, we will push for those who believe in us and are part of our daily news journey, because we treasure those most – an ethos that has stayed consistent for Gulf News’ 42 years and will be for generations to come.
