The Middle East and North African (MENA) music scene is rapidly growing and more people are paying attention to its 400 million + population. As someone who is an Arab American and speaks multiple languages fluently, I want to help artists and companies strategies and navigate this incredible opportunity to expand. I help music and entertainment companies succeed in the Middle Eastern market by providing cultural consultation, managing projects, and creating campaign strategies.

When it comes to artists, I want them to have an equal opportunity regardless of their size, location, or language. I do so by teaching them how the music industry works, helping them navigate and utilized all aspects of DSP’s, market their content to reach the right audiences, and provide them with networking opportunities.

If you’ve every used Spotify, chances are you’ve used a product I’ve had my hands on. I spent 4 years as a Data Curator working on every personalized product we offered, testing the quality of their content, and embedding with teams comprised of engineers, data scientists, and marketers. I helped globalize our products and ensure they were expertly curated and culturally relevant. I got to be a key member of the Wrapped team for multiple years, and lead or contributed to launching some of the biggest products and campaigns in the world.

I transitioned to the music department as a Global Editorial project manager, focusing on our social equity programs. Here I created strategies and launched programs, managed the content from hundreds of editors, created program KPI’s and OKR’s, and cross collaborated with everyone from trust and safety to artist and label partnerships. I got to focus on helping underrepresented artists and communities and catapult their careers to the biggest stages.

As an A&R consultant, I got to live out my lifelong dream of finding and signing electronic music artists to Robbins Entertainment. I got to focus solely on finding up-and-coming artists, which felt like a game I was determined to win. I learned what it took to scout the right partners, draft and negotiate contracts, and get artists in front of a global audience.

As a studio apprentice, I got to experience the inner workings of running a successful sonic branding agency. I developed business plans, researched, curated, and pitched content for our global partners. I made sure the studio had everything it needed to run efficiently and had the opportunity contribute to a variety of teams. Lastly, I helped set up a successful program to offer an artist residency program which provided artists a space to create while also bringing in some additional income for the studio.

Engine Room Audio happens to be the favorite spot for artists and MC’s like Nicki Minaj, Trey Songs, and Angela Yee, so there was truly never a dull moment. As a marketing project coordinator, I developed campaigns and programs to diversify the studios offerings and utilize all of its capabilities. I created and launched projects like a certificate program where students could learn the inner workings of engineering, and a studio rental program where we could offer the space for children to host parties and record songs with their friends. These projects made use of the studio when there was a bit of downtime, drove in additional revenue, and offered unique and memorable experiences. The studio has continued to build off of and run the programs I launched early on in my career!

I joined Tidal a few months after their acquisition by Roc Nation, so while I was technically a marketing coordinator, I also had the opportunity to contribute to a variety of teams across the streaming service. I was lucky enough to curate global playlists for retail spaces like Barney’s (rip), and help distribute merchandise at our concerts. I really found my flow when I noticed the Arabic catalogue’s metadata was a big mess and was given free rein to try and organize it. I categorize thousands of track and albums and correctly routed them to the right artists and labels. As the only person working on our international content, I spent months collaborating with data teams and engineers to ensure our content was localized and searchable for all our users, and helped artists regain thousands of dollars in royalties.