ABU DHABI // Jameela Al Shaiba Al Hameli prides herself on breaking with convention.
“I was raised in a non-traditional way,” she said. “I was schooled in a non-Emirati, in a Christian, environment. Their culture is totally different from ours but I was more open to these cultures.”
She was the only Emirati to attend the Rosary School in 1977.
Her classmates were mostly from Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Egypt. Students were taught to be tolerant, open-minded and to treat individuals with respect, disregarding religious and socio-economic differences.
“I’m not a biased person and welcome people from different languages and religions,” she said. “I know Christianity as much as I know Islam.”
Apart from Arabic, her mother tongue, Ms Al Hameli speaks English, French and Urdu.
“I know a bit of Spanish and I’m now trying to learn Tagalog,” she said. “It’s a skill I got from my father as he speaks seven languages.”
Her father, Al Shaiba Saeed Al Hameli, was the undersecretary at the former Ministry of Petroleum before he retired in the 1990s.
“We’re 12 and I’m the eldest,” said Ms Al Hameli, 40. “I was his favourite baby for a long time. He used to feed me, run after me, teach me. I love him. He’s my idol.
“There’s this notion that women should stay at home. But my father, who is open-minded and highly educated, said to me after I graduated in 1996, ‘You got a degree, go out and start working. Don’t waste your time’.”
She earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the Higher Colleges of Technology in Abu Dhabi. Her first job at the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) was in career development.
“I’ve always dreamed of working in my father’s place, the Ministry of Petroleum, which was changed to Adnoc,” Ms Al Hameli said. “It was a nice challenge but I felt that I did not fit well.
“They used to tell me at Adnoc, ‘Your father is the undersecretary, why you are working?’ They had this certain mentality that a woman’s place is in the home, especially that ours is a very traditional family.”
She moved to the banking sector, holding several senior positions at Union National Bank, National Bank of Abu Dhabi and Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank before joining the Abu Dhabi taxi regulator, TransAD, in November 2007.
“I was a banker for a long time,” she said. “This sector is totally different from any other sector. You learn something new every day.”
She is particularly proud of her achievement at Union National Bank, where she was one of the major players in a project to change the bank’s corporate identity.
“I was working in different areas – from product development and marketing, electronic banking, establishing a call centre and a website,” she said.
Back then she used to work from 7am to as late as 9pm.
“I had a lot of fun working there,” she said. “There was a lot of stress but I really didn’t care since I was doing something productive.”
Ms Al Hameli, who got married in 2003, has three children – Al Shough, 9, Mohammed, 7, and 22-month-old Abdullah.
After she joined TransAd, she was instrumental in setting up the first nursery in the government sector in Abu Dhabi.
“Children are the centre of my life,” she said. “All children love me. In our nursery, they call me Umm Jamul.”
She describes herself as a hands-on mother.
“I do everything on my own,” she said. “I wake up at 6.30am, get their breakfast ready and then pack their lunch boxes. When they get back from school, I help them with their homework.
“I have an open relationship with my children. They are only scared of me when they have low marks in school.”
At TransAD, she maintains an open-door policy.
“I treat every one here as my own brother or sister,” she said. “I don’t think of myself as their superior.
“I don’t approach a person in a rude way because at the end of the day I am not only working for an organisation, I am representing my country, our tradition, my dad and my mum.”
In six years with the agency, Ms Al Hameli rose from customer service and call-centre manager to become the assistant general manager for corporate service.
“She’s like a sister to me and serves as a good role model,” said Zainab Al Hammadi, senior communications officer at TransAD. “She believes that she has to build Emiratis and instil in us a can-do attitude.”
Ms Al Hameli, who plans to take an executive MBA course at HCT Abu Dhabi next year, said: “Emirati women should put education first and stand up for what they think is right.
“I often tell them that if they’re close-minded and focus on a certain tradition or way of thinking, it would hinder their progress.”
rruiz@thenational.ae
