Saudi entrepreneurs from King Salman Youth Center with top AT&T executives in Atlanta this week. (Inset) Shamia Hamidaddin, head of King Salman Youth Center's business development manager. — Saudi Gazette photos Nicolla Hewitt Saudi Gazette
AT the recent job fair held outside Washington D.C. for the 15,000 Saudi students who graduated in the United States this summer, one booth in particular had a lot of visitors: The King Salman Youth Center. The center wasn't offering jobs, but it was offering a new way of thinking for young Saudi entrepreneurs and graduates. As one person at the booth told the Saudi Gazette: “The youth of Saudi Arabia is our next oil.” With that endorsement of investing in the upcoming generations in the Kingdom, the message to graduates and entrepreneurs was clear. The King Salman Youth Center will support them in three key areas: development, empowerment and guidance. Those three values have been apparent all this week in the United States as a group of 12 new Saudi business leaders have been visiting top US business executives in New York and Atlanta. They are part of the Young Entrepreneurs International Program at the King Salman Youth Center. The 12 entrepreneurs are visiting 30 different businesses in 6 days, including companies such as Pepsi, AT&T, CNN, Harpers Baazar, Saatchi and Saatchi, BitPay, The New Yorker and Tribeca Enterprises. The group is being led by Shamia Hamidaddin, business development manager for the King Salman Youth Center. Speaking to the Saudi Gazette from Atlanta she said: “This is the fifth year we have done a trip like this. It's so important as the youth in the Kingdom are our future. We need to support them, and importantly we need to appreciate entrepreneurs, and celebrate entrepreneurship.” Among this group are Saudi entrepreneurs in the fields of IT, publishing, food and beverage and film production. The visit is planned in coordination with Washington-based US-Saudi Business Council. One of the entrepreneurs attending the trip is Faris Al-Turki from Jeddah. After taking to Twitter with the hashtag #FarisBreakfast, he quickly raised his profile in Saudi Arabia talking about his goal of opening great breakfast restaurants in Saudi Arabia. So far, he's opened three restaurants in a year and a half, so this trip to meet leaders in the food and beverage field in the United States was a huge opportunity for him. In an interview with the Saudi Gazette, Faris said: “I want to have the biggest breakfast chain in Saudi, so this week I came and met with senior executives from Chick Fill who have 1,800 restaurants across the US and 75,000 employees. Not only that 97 percent of people they hire stay with the company. It's amazing. I wanted to hear directly from them about the mistakes they made along the way so I can avoid them, and of course how they over came obstacles to be this incredible success. I want to do the same for my business.” At each of these meetings, both the senior US executives and the group from the King Salman Youth Center, are encouraged to be as open as possible with each other. The idea is for both sides to learn about opportunities. In her interview with the Saudi Gazette, Shamia Hamidaddin said: “Entrepreneurship is so powerful in the United States. We want to take that knowledge back to Saudi Arabia, to help others form committees in their communities to empower others. We always ask lots of questions, about how they built their brands and their strategies. These executives often ask us about ways we could all collaborate back in the Kingdom.” That is certainly welcome news, not just for the young Saudi entrepreneurs visiting the US this week, but also for Deputy Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman who is Chair of the Board of Directors of the King Salman Center for Youth. He is on the record as saying, “The center seeks to achieve noble objectives through recognizing creative youth in various fields, and encourage their inspired abilities through exchanging success stories among themselves in order to contribute to the building of their nation.” One of those success stories in building a different aspect for the economy is another young entrepreneur in the US this week, Nora Okail of Riyadh. After planning a high tech art event for Aramco, she decided to focus on untapped areas in the Kingdom where her business model could have an impact and become a business. Nora is now planning to launch the first “Smart Park” in the Middle East by 2025. This week's visit to Atlanta and New York, and the diversity of the business leaders they met with was perfect for her vision. “Entrepreneurship is about different business models, and for me success is not about what industry you are in. Success is how you do your business, how you develop a work culture, and how that culture and success can impact cities and communities. That's what intend to do in Saudi Arabia,” Noura said. It's these success stories of new and thriving ideas and business models for the Kingdom, that have left many of these top business leaders in the United States surprised. Shamia Hamidaddin explained it this way, “These visits are so good for both sides as the people we have met are really impressed and surprised by the level of talent that exists in the Kingdom. They certainly didn't expect it, and now they want to help entrepreneurs with incubators that we have lined up. They want to learn about our culture, support entrepreneurship in Saudi Arabia, and in some cases finance investment.” With a new leadership now firmly in place in Saudi Arabia, Shamia Hamidaddin added, “Under King Salman and Deputy Crown Prince Muhammad I know their vision for entrepreneurship will be an incredible gift for the youth.” That gift is one which will make Saudi Arabia an ongoing power house in the global arena, and one full of hope and opportunity for generations to come.
