Women in Hospitality - CEO of Sovereign Hotels Roxana Jaffar Shares Her Exciting Leadership Journey in the UAE’s Hotel Industry & Trends to Know
‘My leadership mantra is ‘Don’t sprint after success, fly after excellence’. Meet today’s woman dreamer, Roxana Jaffar. Based in the United Arab Emirates, a country known for its robust hospitality industry, Roxana shares her exciting life as the CEO of Sovereign Hotels, and her passion for leadership and poetry. Her greatest achievement was winning the ARABIA CSR AWARD, awarded under the patronage of the league of Arab States - the only hotel out of 10 Arab Countries to have been a winner for FIVE YEARS consecutively. A woman to know, Roxana shares her thoughts on the future of the hospitality industry post Covid, the turning points in her career, and an excerpt from her poetry book, The Parallel World! Enjoy her inspiring story!
1.Tell us your story. You have had quite an exciting career, and have a passion for leadership. What were some memorable moments in your leadership journey?
Whilst, I believe that leaders can be bred, I believe I was a born leader, being the eldest of 6 children of two families that lived together and I was given no choice but to be a role model, wield my authority fairly and develop that vital EQ – that emotional quotient that helped me to understand, and manage my emotions in a positive way, so I was able to empathize with the hurt siblings and communicate effectively when defusing their conflict and become a leader.
It was natural that I got into one leadership role to another straight from school and through my corporate career. And it was natural that I would learn about leadership for my MBA and do a dissertation on the subject titled “Servant Leadership: A Must for the 21st Century Leadership” – a philosophy that breeds leaders to be winners.
However a memorable moment in my journey was in London when I established my own wholesale donut factory distributing to the likes of Harrods & British Rail Stations. I had a lucrative contract signed on a Friday afternoon with the assistant purchasing officer of a reputable company. But on Monday I was informed that the contract had been cancelled.
It seemed my competitor had taken the buyer for a round of golf in the weekend, and overturned my business.
Not to be thwarted, as a female leader – I purchased a couple of boxes of donuts from the competitor’s stores and with my samples went and saw the head purchaser and attained my contract by showing our excellent products. My leadership mantra: ‘Don’t sprint after success, fly after excellence’ helped me to win my case.
2. You have worked in the hospitality industry, and currently reside in the UAE, known for their hospitality experiences. What are some trends you see in the hospitality industry there? And where do you see the industry in 5 years?
I have been in the hospitality industry since 12 years, opening two hotels during the recession of 2008/9 in Dubai that perhaps echoed the global downturn. In that year we actually broke even, unlike several other hospitality establishments. The reason was that we were not panic driven, but factored in the cash flow a contingency and introduces stringent cost saving strategies at the outset.
I see there is a trend of a downturn every seven years. So the period in between the downs is when a company must maximize efforts to attain topmost revenue, beating the budget, and collecting funds as a contingency for the next recession. Luckily with that strategy we managed to steer the course of the 2017 downturn that took us straight into the no-go COVID19 era, keeping our head above water with least amount of cash injection. Of course, saving on costs of letting go of 50% of our most valuable asset – our staff – and other such initiatives have helped us to get back as business returned.
3. What were some of the most interesting projects you worked on in your career as a leader in hospitality?
My earliest project was to get our hotel to be recognized as being a leader in Corporate Social Responsibility by entwining within sound business strategies, CSR strategies.
My take has always been that people should want to live, work and visit a good sustainable city. Dubai in a short span of time has certainly proved itself by acclimatizing to sustainable measures; Dubai is climbing the ladder towards being a sustainable city. For us being part of this society it is mandatory for us to help make the world a better place to live in, by being Socially Responsible.
Learning about the globes depleting resources, and of us hindering the survival of our future generations reminded me of a proverb that I learnt in school in Kenya “You must treat the earth well, it was not given to you as a gift by your parents. It is loaned to you by your children”
With these thoughts, believing that every human being has a role to play in this society and each has a responsibility in giving back to society, I decided I had to empower my staff and colleagues at work to become socially responsible.
With humble beginnings, gradually with well thought out initiatives I have paved up the way for my employees to start contributing to the society and environment. By collaborating with various organizations working for social cause has organically showed me the importance of giving back to nature and society where we live in.
What do you consider as your biggest achievement through this and people who have assisted you in making this happen?
Whilst I am a multi award winner myself and the hotel and its restaurants, winners in their own rights, the plume of awards of the many over the years is the ARABIA CSR AWARD awarded under the patronage of the league of Arab States - the only hotel out of 10 Arab Countries to have been a winner, not once or twice but for FIVE YEARS consecutively.
4. What was the turning point for you?
The turning point for me was consummating a partnership with United Nations World Food Programme (UNWFP) the largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide.
I was accepted by UNWFP to be a partner in bringing awareness to their objectives and run initiatives that would help to engender funds to feed the hungry in the world.
This gave a direction and meaning to the Initiative for Social Responsibility: “Loves You Campaign" (LUC) that I gave birth to.
This campaign was initiated eleven years ago with a mandate to support compassionate causes, to plan initiatives for raising resources and funds for building civil society and upholding global partnerships that help global disasters. This campaign was planned to extend a helping hand to victims of ecological calamities, economic crisis through partnerships with global organisations like UNWFP.
LUC is unique in its appeal that all members of the staff, regardless of rank, color or creed, come to gather to achieve its objectives. LUC’s backdrop of Prophet Mohammed’s words: “Life is only worth living if lived for someone else” helps to inculcate an ethos of giving, of putting another person before oneself that in turn reflects into service accorded to the guest that in turn helps to deliver the business objectives. I am pleased to announce that as at 31st December 2020, in supporting United Nations Sustainability Development Goals (SDG’s), Goal No 2 – ‘End Hunger, Achieve food security’ we have been able to impact 497,941 hungry in the world.
Today all the staff will give of their time willingly as they know it is impacting the hungry, perhaps in their country.
5. You published a poetry book, A Parallel World. Feel free to share one of the poems from your book.
It is my pleasure to share a poem from the Anthology of Poetry – ‘A Parallel World:
To get you in the mood of the genre of spirituality please find this trailer of the book that has been published on Amazon
The Poem is titled: The Saree Pallu
6. As the platform for women dreamers, what is your next big dream?
My big dream is that all the global citizens should be driven by Sustainability and become Socially Responsible.
Whilst the leaders of the universe are riving COP 26 as an environmental pact, under United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, we too can do to assist individually in how we look at recycling of waste, saving on water, saying no to plastic, etc to uphold UN’s 17 Sustainability Goals.
So my dream is to launch a movement titled ‘Sustainability Trailblazers; that will educate the common citizens.
Thank you Roxana for sharing your story with us! We are excited to have you in our empowered women’s network!
Bio: Roxana Jaffer is currently the CEO of Sovereign Hotels with a responsibility of Holiday Inn Dubai and can be classified as a study in exceptionalism. Born in Kenya , she was educated in London as a Certified Accountant (ACCA). She attained an MBA with a Merit in Leadership with University of Liverpool (UK) earning her dissertation titled, Servant Leadership: A must for the 21st Century Global Leader. She continued as a scholar of the Harvard Business School for Executive Education
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