Businessman Sameer Owaidah Describes Keys to Success

“Practicing business ethics, avoiding corruption, seizing opportunities at the right time, following adventures and hard work." These are the tenets that Palestinian businessman Sameer Owaidah say led to his success.

Owaidah spoke about his journey to owning a multi-national construction machinery company in a lecture entitled: "Time, Place and I," attended by Birzeit University President Khalil Hindi and faculty members and students.

Owaidah talked about his sense of belonging to and nostalgia for Jerusalem, where he was born in 1934 and studied. His family was displaced from the city, and Owaidah graduated from the National College in Ramallah. Owaidah worked in the Jordanian Ministry of Social Affairs, and then moved to work in the Arabian Gulf as a translator and editor in the Saudi Arabian army, the Kuwaiti broadcast news, and then as a sales manager at Yusuf Ahmed Alghanem Group in Kuwait.

From 1966 to 1972, Owaidah worked as general manager for the Arab Gulf Equipment Co. in the UAE, then established the Gulf Development and Construction (INMA), a company engaged in the import of construction machinery and equipment through its seven branches in the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Qatar. He remained head of the company’s administration until the end of 2011.

Owaidah’s address was one in a series of lectures dedicated to entrepreneurship and leadership being sponsored by Birzeit University.