Nisreen Shocair has held various positions within the music, entertainment and retail industries at Virgin, Sony Music, and others. While she’s worked in the United States, UK & Germany, she’s spent the last 12 years in Dubai, managing brands across 10 countries in the Middle East North Africa region.  Nisreen was instrumental in turning around the Virgin brand in the Middle East and making it a youth-focused destination, reflecting the regional demographic. She’s received many awards for many different reasons, from the likes of Forbes, Arabian Business, Wharton and others.

Nisreen is a CEO 3 times over, and now runs the Middle East arm of YOOX-Net a Porter, the world’s leading online luxury fashion retailer.

During this rich and diverse episode, we talked about the turn-around success story – how she rescued Virgin Megastores, at a time when CD sales were dying. We talked about customer loyalty and how to foster it. We went deep into team dynamics and how to build a tight, loyal team. We dived into IVF and touched on adoption and surrogacy. We discussed obstacles in the work place and what great managers do to retain talent. We talked about returnships, bringing women back after many years out of the workforce, and ways to support all employees at difficult times in their life.

My favorite quote of the episode was: “you don’t need to compromise financials for humanity or sustainability. You can do both.” It seems very apt to our current troubled times.

Nisreen’s book recommendation is Cheap, a book about the detrimental effects of low-cost manufacturing and buying habits. You can find Nisreen on LinkedIn – please do reach out to her with any questions on IVF, adoption or surrogacy.

****************

We would love to hear from you! Please drop us a note or take this 1-minute survey to propose topics or guests you’d like to see on future shows.  Thank you!