Who is Sophie le Ray?
I am an entrepreneur, a mother to two girls and two dogs, a wife and business partner to my cofounder and a mentor to teenagers and young adults. I am the CEO of Naseba and in 2009, I founded what is now known as the Global WIL Economic Forum.
What is your Naseba?
Naseba creates growth opportunities for companies across the MENA region and beyond – we help our clients raise capital, enter new markets, secure partners, close sales and educate workforces.
We essentially connect people, partners and ideas and facilitate deals.
What is the spirit of your Naseba?
We have a motif on a wall in our office with the famous quote “The man at the top of the mountain didn’t fall there”. This really does sum up the spirit of our business.
We believe that success is a choice – it doesn’t happen by accident. It’s your choice to go above and beyond to make something happen. We have a team of over 100 people at Naseba who really do stretch to deliver their best – to colleagues, clients and themselves.
Why the business facilitation industry?
I studied ancient history and art history and the plan was for me to become an archaeologist. However, my life took a different path and my short-lived ‘corporate’ career started with a large conference company in London. The techniques from my academic career actually became an integral part of my development, particularly the discipline required to research and analyse information. This is what ignited my passion for production, combining; research, creativity, targeted content creation and people management. I learnt the ropes in the corporate world and realised it wasn’t for me, but I still had passion for the work itself. Just a few years later, we founded Naseba.
What’s the unique value you’re bringing to the market?
We never wanted to become another service for swapping business cards, for them to simply sit forgotten at the bottom of a drawer.
For us, the emphasis has always been on business facilitation and you can only successfully do this by building meaningful relationships and nurturing them. But this doesn’t mean we’ve taken a soft approach – quite the opposite. We are successful because we are commercially tenacious and our services have always developed where we’ve seen opportunity. Our business will always evolve to meet and exceed the needs of our clients, supporting them on their growth journeys. Since inception, we have facilitated more than a billion dollars’ worth of deals. We have connected over 100,000 global executives through more than 1,000 proprietary business platforms and this is always growing.
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