Our fantastic Jury for the 2017 edition of the NUHA Blogging Prizes; scroll down for their statement announcing the winning articles!
Yasmine Aboudrar is the Group Strategy & Development Director of Attijariwafa Bank, a top leading financial institution in Morocco and Africa.
Before that, she spent more than 10 years at McKinsey & Company in France and Morocco, where she was a Junior Partner and had the opportunity to develop in-depth expertise in the social and economic development sectors, and more specifically on education and employment topics. She notably contributed to Education for Employment: Realizing Arab Youth Potential (April 2011), a report commissioned by the International Finance Corporation and which led to the creation of a US$2 billion fund for education for employment initiatives across the region over the following five years. Yasmine also participated in the redaction of The power of parity : how advancing equality can add $12 trillion to global growth.
Yasmine holds a double Master in Science from HEC Paris and Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, and is engaged in charities that champion inclusive growth.
A true art passionate, Alya Nazaraly accompanies artists, venues but also projects developers everyday into the realization of their cultural projects, bringing always more creativity into our daily life and enabling artistic encounters.
A graduate of Sciences Po Paris, specialized in sociology and cultural management, Alya has had the chance of working for both public and private cultural actors, ranging from the French Ministry of Culture to the Picasso Museum, Artcurial and the Louis Vuitton Foundation.
As the director of development of Le Jardin Imparfait, Alya now has the opportunity to accompany strong cultural actors, mainly in the fields of music and performing arts. Alya also works on other projects as a free-lance Artistic Director and consultant (A.N.other way Agency).
Michael Lints' entrepreneurial spirit kicked in shortly after graduating from The Hague University of Applied Science, when he left the largest insurance and asset management company in The Netherlands to start his own IT business. In 2007, Michael founded his own venture fund focused on Dutch’s small and medium-size enterprise to help them with capital financing, development and relevant support and strategy.
Through his earlier venture in the Netherlands, Michael got acquainted with Golden Gate Ventures and moved his family to Singapore to join them in 2013 to help with fundraising, strategic partnerships, mergers and acquisitions. Michael has helped raised over over US$60M for Golden Gate Ventures and its portfolio companies and made Partner in 2017.
Michael is a former vice chairman of the Economic Development Board of Rotterdam and a graduate of the Harvard Business School. He is a true believer in a work-life balance lifestyle and has completed marathons, cycling and Ironman races all over the world in his spare time and was recently appointed the Singapore ambassador for top cycling brand, Trek.
From Alya, Michael and Yasmina, on 18 December 2017
We enjoyed reading the articles!
We were very impressed with the shortlisted articles for the Young Writers category, especially considering the entrants’ ages. However the decision to choose Shaurya Baruah’s article ‘The Abyss’ was unanimous. We were particularly impressed with Shaurya’s creative thinking and his ability to create suspense and tension in a few short words.
There were a remarkable number of entries for the Youth prize, with the quality of these articles being very high. We had some very tough decisions to make, and in particular we struggled to decide between our first and second place winners. We decided to award Marisa Orton first place as we were very impressed by her smart and creative approach to the topic which demonstrated an advanced, coherent argument. We awarded Sherry Raj second place, as her entry covered a unique and sentimental topic.
We struggled to choose our third-place winner for the Adult prizes. The shortlist was filled with extremely strong entries and we wished to acknowledge each and every one. After some debate, we finally selected Jacklin Kwan’s article. Jacklin took a very logical angle, but interspersed her evidence-based debate with personal anecdotes and observations. As a result, this entry was both incredibly informative and enjoyable to read.
The decision to award Charu Vashishtha the second-place prize was unanimous. Charu took a very creative approach to the topic, developing a style which was persuasive and compelling. Her writing encouraged her readers to respond to her article long after they had finished reading – which is reflected in the debate generated in the comments.
Finally, all three of us placed Siam Ahmed’s entry in first place. Siam’s article was outstanding, and his approach was very analytical. His entry featured a fully coherent argument with well-placed examples and explanations. His exploration of various aspects of the topic demonstrated a unique way of thinking.
Well done to all of the authors!