Making history

Ushering me to a place on one of the sofas in the corner of her office, Sheikha Lubna is visibly filled with the energy that has carried her to the groundbreaking role that she currently occupies and her enthusiasm is infectious as she shares the story of the journey that brought her here.

“My appointment on 2 November 2004 was a historic change actually,” she confides, “I mean, for a woman to actually hold a ministerial position in the cabinet. There have been many women ministers appointed in the Gulf and some Arab countries but in my portfolio it was the first time ever, especially in the Middle East.”

She rightly points out, however, that the appointment was based on merit rather than gender. “A lot of people thought ‘oh, yes, a woman, it’s just for window dressing’ – but you don’t do window dressing with politics or the economy.”

“But the reaction was not all about me,” she continues. “Usually what happens is that the Western press will go and Google these countries to find out more and of all the ministers, even the men, I’m the one who came up with a lot more information because of my visibility from the private sector, as a public speaker and from taking part in international forums and events. That was confirmation that my appointment was due to merit and the credibility of my career path,” she adds.

The international press were quick to pick up on the nomination, which in turn raised the UAE’s international profile: “I remember the BBC, India Financial Times and I think it was Time magazine in the US, wrote about the UAE as a liberal country as a result of it. I also get letters from women in the US, the West and India saying that they’ve read about me and I’ve become a role model for them, so it’s not just in the region,” she adds.

Despite Sheikha Lubna’s experience in the private sector and the similarity between her approach to her role as a CEO and as a minister, the transition was not without a degree of pressure. “The number one criteria, and this has always been my philosophy in life, is delivery,” she says. “As in all my previous jobs, people only judge you from delivery; it reflects your accountability, reliability and the trust in the projects that you’re delivering.”

The expectations placed on her and her own worries about being able to deliver led to an enormous amount of pressure following the appointment. “My first two weeks were basically sleepless! I was just thinking, ‘how can I deliver? This is really hard’, and then I woke up one morning and I thought, ‘my government chose me, they are there to support me’ – and that was my turning point, my revelation, and I had a sense of relief wash over me,” she says.

“I think it was because, psychologically, it was the first time a woman had been in this position and I thought a woman would be more watched, more under the magnifying glass. The best thing to do is just to breathe deeply and then focus,” she adds.

“What was nice was that when I was appointed CEO of Tejari I got a lot of letters of support from men and women who knew me professionally,” she says. “Similarly, when I went to the World Economic Forum as a minister I also received a lot of support and I think that this was a lot to do with my achievements in the private sector.”

In the midst of her first missions abroad, setting the pace with a nine-day whistlestop tour of Singapore, Australia and Malaysia – “in the end they [the accompanying businessmen] all got really tired, because this minister was overworking everyone”, she laughs – Sheikha Lubna began to remodel the Ministry: “It was funny because I think that everyone was pre-warned; I think that those who spoke about me from the private sector said that I was a tough CEO, they told my staff ‘she requires commitment, delivery, quality’. But it’s funny, they still think I’m a “techy” because of my background,” she smiles.

Sheikha Lubna’s background does indeed revolve almost entirely around the field of technology. Having received her degree in systems engineering in California she began work in 1983 (“I earned 5,000 dirhams, can you imagine?! Working eight hour shifts,” she laughs) before heading to Dubai Ports for seven years to run the technology portfolio.

Her strategy for pushing her agenda of change and modernisation at the Ports gives a clear insight into Sheikha Lubna’s modus operandi, whether in the boardroom or when presiding over departmental meetings: “It’s not about enforcing or mandating your own private ethics,” she tells me, “it’s about leaving it up to others to accept. There’s always this fear, this misconception of technology; the way I handled it was that I did the work not them.”

“I worked hard to be accepted by them to learn the lingo of the maritime industry – then I could communicate the interests by telling them how the technology could enhance their particular field,” she expands. “People think that the power of technology is mostly about ‘super-knowledge’, but it’s not – it’s about being a psychologist first, and a lobbyist.”

The second part of her people management strategy is to clearly avoid personalising issues: “You cannot let these things become your problem, otherwise you lose,” she says.

“If I have a problem at work I talk about it there, and I make sure that the person knows that it’s not about them or me. I worked from 1983 and I came across some people who objected to working with me because I was a woman. I let it go and found other ways to deliver. If I’d chosen these battles about others’ opinions of me because of my gender I would have lost a long time back. It’s about the bigger picture, about delivery, about society.”

Sheikh Mohammed launched Tejari in 2000 as a B2B marketplace for online government procurement and Sheikha Lubna was chosen to run the business as its first CEO, a challenge that mushroomed with the dotcom crash soon after her appointment:”It [Tejari] was launched in April and six months later it went bust. I was left with the challenge of how to deliver.”

A challenge that she answered successfully – when the business was assessed by AT Kearney, Tejari was one of the few online marketplaces worldwide that had grown organically while keeping to its first business model.

“The challenge with technology, as with everything, is convincing people that they want to use it – it’s about change management, we gave them the leadership; every year all the organisations that used it would compete amongst themselves to win an award at GITEX, so all of a sudden it’s about them, not me,” she explains.

“But it’s the adoption process you have to wait for and then it becomes part of their lives; think about how the first mobile phones were like bricks and so exclusive and now they’re so small with so many functions and everyone has one – it’s a matter of timing,” she adds.

The push for technological advancement has continued into the ministerial role with Sheikha Lubna contributing to the e-government initiatives and the national online services. The continuing drive for modernisation has been rewarded, with the UAE having retained its number one spot in the World Economic Forum’s competitive index for Arab countries.

Sheikha Lubna emphasises the country’s modernity by pointing to the numbers of women in key positions and sectors, and is quick to dismiss any need for affirmative action to get more women into the workplace. “You don’t see things about forcing quotas here, all of it is already happening in society,” she says.

“Culturally speaking women are accepted here; they are in 30% of management positions, they occupy 35% of the banking and finance sector. More importantly in the parliament, the Federal National Council they account for 22.1% of the representatives,” she adds. “Compare that to 19.7% in the UK, 12% in France or just 6.3% of representation in the US Congress and it really gives you the idea of scale.”

She insists, however, that changes in ingrained attitudes must begin at ground level: “I’m not a ‘women’s lib’ where I say women must work, I think they must choose, it’s their decision – but what’s more important is something like the language in kid’s books, that should change so you don’t see things like ‘my mum cooks, my dad works’, that’s very important.”

It is not just gender stereotypes that Sheikha Lubna has had to deal with, she has also run up against cultural differences in her long career. “When I used to travel as a CEO to the States as a keynote speaker, people used to say things to me like ‘do women need permission from their parents to travel?’ or ‘do you have a chaperone?’,” she says.

“I’d look at them and say ‘I’m the CEO of a tech company! You think my society doesn’t allow this?!’ You have to question them on what basis they ask these questions and then they realise, but you can’t expect others just to read about it – we have a responsibility to communicate this, to convey the message to other societies.”

This was underlined by the reaction to the DP World furore over the sale of American ports. “I wanted to go over there then and speak to the ones who spoke negatively about us – I wanted to show them that they didn’t really know anything about the country,” she explains.

“When you go in there and they identify your face as part of it, it immediately changes their perceptions. It puts a personal face to it. We’re very cosmopolitan, we have 155 nationalities, we’re a trendy society, people are happy and want to be here, but sometimes that’s not communicated well abroad – it’s our best-kept secret I think,” she smiles.

Being a groundbreaker throughout her career, she was the first Emirati woman to graduate abroad with a technology degree and come back, the first to work for Dubai Ports as a software engineer, the first as CEO in a B2B e-commerce initiative – her achievements have been recognised in numerous international awards in the UK, the US, Italy – has set Sheikha Lubna up as a role model for both young men and young women.

“My nephews who are studying in the UK are always being asked if this minister is a relative of theirs and then they get told ‘well, she’s cool’, that’s the word they use,” she laughs. “But even when I’m out in the malls or in town young people come up to me, it’s lovely.”

The message that Sheikha Lubna gives to the younger generation is certainly one of hope. “Perseverance is a quality I have to push forward, I’m not aggressive by nature, when you’re trying to deliver something to corporations and societies that hasn’t been done before being aggressive works against you,” she says.

“You have to deliver something in a way that people will accept it, sometimes in small doses until they do. Have faith in yourself and your abilities – we all make mistakes, but it’s ok, you don’t learn from your successes,” she smiles.