Lifestyle

I used to think legacy was a word for the end of things. For farewell speeches and framed portraits, for a career summarised in a single paragraph. I no longer believe that. Legacy is not what remains when you leave. It is what you are quietly building while you are still in the room. I’ve been writing for Emirates Woman for over a year now, and this anniversary issue invites a candour I do not always allow myself. Forty-five years is a long time for any institution to keep showing up. It makes me ask a question I rarely say out loud: what, exactly, am I adding?

Early in my career, I answered that question with achievements. The mandate, the title, the result. Moving to Paris in 2015 to help build what would become Meta’s luxury division, in a language that was not my own, changed that. Achievement, I discovered, is only the visible layer. What lasts is deeper: the trust of people who did not have to give it to you, the standards you keep when no one is checking, the way people feel after they have spent time in your company.

Luxury has taught me this better than any other field. The great maisons I have worked alongside do not think in seasons. They think in generations. They ask not what will be admired this year, but what will still be worth wanting in 50. Today, in the boardrooms where I sit and in the company I have co-founded, I try to hold myself to the same question. What will outlast me?

I have come to believe legacy rests on three decisions.

THE FIRST IS TO BUILD PEOPLE, NOT ONLY RESULTS.
Results are essential, and I would never dismiss them. But they belong to the quarter in which they were delivered. People carry what you gave them into rooms you will never enter. I know this because I have been on the receiving end of it, repeatedly. Women have opened doors for me throughout my career. Some told me, with a frankness I will always value, exactly what I needed to improve to earn my next promotion. Others recommended me for board seats, lending their own credibility to my name. None of it appears on a CV. All of it changed my direction. And all of it was done with intention. They chose to do it, and I have never forgotten that it was a choice.

THE SECOND IS TO SET THE STANDARD, DELIBERATELY.
Whether we intend it or not, women in leadership are watched — by those who are rising and by those wondering whether the room has space for them. Whatever we tolerate, we teach. Whatever we refuse, we also teach. I think about this often: in how I run a meeting, how I handle disagreement, whom I invite to the table, and whom I advocate for when I am not present.

THE THIRD IS TO BUILD SOMETHING THAT DOES NOT NEED YOU.
As a founder, this question has become more urgent and more humbling. The measure of what you have made is not how indispensable you are, but whether it can thrive without you. The same is true of influence. My aim is not to be remembered. It is to leave behind women who are more capable, more connected, and more fearless than they would otherwise have been.

Legacy is not built only at work, of course. I am also building a life, with my partner and our family, in parallel with my career, and the two have never been separate. What I hope to model at home is what I hope to model in the boardroom: presence, integrity, and the courage to begin before everything is certain. If you are early in your career, do not wait for your legacy to feel earned before you begin. It starts with the next conversation you handle well, the next person you lift.

If you are in the middle of it, in the demanding years when everything is asked of you at once, protect your standards and your people, because they will carry you further than stamina alone. And if you are further along, as many readers of this magazine are, consider that your most important work may now be the least visible: sponsoring women, recommending them for seats they have not yet thought to ask for, and sometimes simply stepping aside so that someone else may step forward.

For 45 years, Emirates Woman has given women a place to be seen and heard. I am grateful to have a place on its pages. Legacies, like magazines, are built issue by issue, with discipline, with taste, and with faith that someone will pick them up and find something of themselves inside.

I don’t yet know exactly what mine will be. But I know how I intend to build it: with intention, with generosity, and always with the door open behind me.