After a career in teaching and managing schools in Lebanon, the Arabian Gulf and the UK, I established EDUGATES, an educational management and consultancy company, in 2000. Over the next decade, EDUGATES teams working in that region of the world, established 10 private international K-12 schools in the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar and Lebanon. Our work encompassed a holistic service of school start up, beginning with development of the project concept, liaising with government bodies to obtain a licence, working with architects and overseeing the building project, gaining curriculum approval, recruiting school leadership and staff, equipping the campus with all equipment and resources and opening the school. Thereafter, we managed each school for the duration of our contract before handing it over to its board.Among our other contracts were a number of school improvement, school licensing, team building and professional staff development projects.For all of our projects, we recruited, developed and led teams from diverse cultures and ethnicities from all over the world.In 2014, I moved to New Zealand. Soon afterwards, I was approached to deliver cultural competence and language training for NZ official missions abroad. I recruited a team to develop resources and deliver courses that prepare NZers for missions to Japan, South Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Egypt, South Sudan, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Yemen, and Columbia. In addition, we have developed resources and deliver cultural competency training about Islam as a religion and in society.