Mashary is also working alongside Emaar Hospitality Group CEO Olivier Harnisch and others within the leadership to design Women in Leadership programme where the team is actively inspecting the different aspects of women working in the hospitality.
Emaar Hospitality Group broke new ground a couple of months ago when it appointed the first female Emirati general manager to lead its four-star Arabesque property, Manzil Downtown in Dubai, a boutique hotel under the Vida Hotels & Resorts brand.
Sharihan Al Mashary will be taking the helm of the 197-key property from her predecessor Ahmed Elnawawy who was in the role for only a span of six months. Mashary was previously serving in an operational role at Manzil and knew that she was being primed to take on the general manager role.
However, the decision to appoint her as general manager came sooner than expected. Her first reaction or thought, she tells Hotelier was, “about time!” Mashary laughingly admits.
With under two months as a general manager under her belt, Mashary is full of ideas for her new role but is especially interested in highlighting Emiratisation, youth development and shifting the focus to sustainability. But one thing is quite apparent, Mashary is completely aware of the responsibility she holds through her newly-appointed position not just for herself but for all Emiratis as well as women everywhere. Merit, Mashary says, has been the basis for success.
“To be the first female Emirati general manager, it is exciting and as a matter of fact, it’s a big job. My country has a lot of talent and I think it is about time we explore different industries and lead in those industries, too,” Mashary explains.
“It is extremely interesting to see not that many hoteliers being Emirati and especially being a female, too. Studying in this field, I knew there were few Emiratis – both male and female. And I think I was about the only one who went fully into operations and went into all the roles that I went into,” she adds.
But her path up the hotelier ladder has been anything but conventional. A daughter of an Emirati father who was in the construction business and a Persian mother, Mashary grew up around diverse cultural influences and construction sites littered with bricks, wires, and cables. Used to functioning in a male-dominated workplace, Mashary didn’t want to hold back professionally and wanted to aim for the skies, literally.
“I wanted to join the Air Force that’s all I knew and that’s all I wanted to be. So I went to get an engineering degree in aeronautical mechanics and aviation management,” Mashary reveals.
When the college she was attending in Dubai closed down after a year, Abu Dhabi Men’s college opened up their doors for her and she became the first female to attend the all-men’s college.
While hospitality was nowhere near the horizon, her sister’s decision to study hospitality enticed her to switch her career path.
“My sister started studying hospitality management and I used hear the interesting side of my sister’s life and so I started to wonder if it’s too late to start in the career path that my sister has started in. I had two days to apply and start the courses at Emirates Academy of Hospitality Management (EAHM) and that’s how my hospitality journey began — this was back in 2007,” Mashary relays.
10 years on, quite a lot has changed professionally for Mashary who opted to start on the culinary side in the kitchens when she enrolled at EAHM.
“In terms of the personality required and the strength of character, I found some similarity with my previous degree and this led me to the culinary side in the kitchen. It is intense, it is tough and it’s a male dominating environment. But you learn so much about who you are, what you can stand and who you will become,” Mashary asserts. She credits her culinary success to Michael Kitts, EAHM’s culinary director and her “lifelong mentor” for recognising her talent and pushing to test the boundaries.
“I thought I wanted to be a world-class chef – one of the only Emirati chefs not only on the national level but on the international level. So I started competing and won – that came as a surprise. That definitely built up my confidence.”
Using her background in kitchens, Mashary moved on food & beverage before making the shift to the operational route within hotels. She earned her first stripe as a hotelier by being part of the opening team for Palazzo Versace Hotel in Dubai before joining Emaar Hospitality Group for the opening of Address Boulevard in Downtown Dubai. The transition, Mashary, was smooth but took a few years.
“Coming out of being a chef to then being a restaurateur, then moving into operations management role – looking after the banqueting and events, and then management was a learning experience. Additionally, I also supported a lot of marketing as well – I was asked to do task-force management within different departments,” she explains.
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