Culture, leadership, and the rooms that weren’t designed for you

Sometimes you enter a room and realize you’ve arrived late.
Not because of the time on the clock—but because of the story in their heads.

Before you sit down, before you say your name, before you open your laptop,
your identity has already walked in.

Your country.
Your accent.
Your scarf.
Your skin.
Your passport.
Your Arab name on a printed placard in a room where nobody can pronounce it.

People already think they know you.
The question is: What do you do with that?

This is the daily reality for young leaders from Saudi, the Arab world, and so many places that are more often talked about than listened to.

Being “The Only One” in the Room

You don’t forget the first time you’re the only person from your country in a meeting.

The map on the wall has your region shaded in a single color.
The policy brief reduces your home to three bullet points.
Someone casually says, “You know how people there are,” and the word there lands like a stone.

In that moment, you become three people at once:

  1. Yourself, with your own questions and experiences.
  2. A walking answer to “What are Saudis / Arabs / [insert identity] really like?”
  3. An untrained spokesperson for millions of people who did not elect you, but who you feel responsible toward anyway.

It’s empowering and exhausting.

You’re proud to speak for a place that matters deeply to you.
You’re also painfully aware that one careless sentence can confirm every lazy stereotype in the room.

This is what it feels like when your identity walks in before you do.

Balancing Tradition and Global Spaces (Without Losing Either)

If you’re from Saudi or the wider Arab world, your leadership journey is often a negotiation between two strong forces:

  • The world you come from – family expectations, social codes, faith, language, elders, history.
  • The world you’re entering – global forums, English emails, policy jargon, hybrid events, digital diplomacy.

You carry both in the same body.

Maybe you’ve had this moment:

  • You’re at an international reception where everyone is casually networking with drinks in hand, and you’re scanning the room for a quiet corner to pray.
  • You’re asked to join a late-night “informal” meeting, but you come from a culture where you can’t just disappear without letting family know where you are.
  • You’re told to “just call people by their first name,” but you grew up saying “Dr., Professor, Ustadh, Ustatha” and it feels like cutting a piece of respect out of your tongue.

Balancing tradition and global spaces doesn’t mean choosing one over the other.
It means learning how to carry both with integrity:

  • Saying “no” to what crosses your values, even if it’s “normal” for everyone else.
  • Saying “yes” to learning from others without apologizing for where you come from.
  • Translating your culture, not erasing it.

Real leadership in these spaces is not “how well can you copy the dominant culture?”
It’s “how skillfully can you bridge cultures without betraying your own?”

Carrying Your Culture With Pride — But Not as a Stereotype

There’s a thin line between representing your culture and being reduced to it.

On one side, you are invited to share:

  • stories from Saudi neighborhoods, not just skylines;
  • the way decisions are actually made in your community;
  • the nuance behind headlines about your region.

On the other side, you are constantly asked to be:

  • the “Arab voice” on every panel about “the Middle East,” even when the topic is far from your expertise;
  • the cultural flavor of the event, not an equal partner;
  • the one who explains your entire region in three minutes between coffee breaks.

You feel it when people only want the image of your culture:
the dress, the photo, the “inspirational” story.

Not the complexity.
Not the disagreements.
Not the truths that might be uncomfortable.

Carrying your culture with pride means:

  • Refusing to speak about what you don’t know, even when they expect you to.
  • Saying, “I can’t speak for all Saudis / Arabs / Muslims, but here’s what I see in my community.”
  • Sharing stories that are honest, not polished for other people’s comfort.

It also means rejecting the pressure to be “the good exception”:

“You’re not like the others from your region.”

That’s not a compliment.
That’s an invitation to distance yourself from your own people.

You can answer, calmly:

“There are many of us. You just haven’t met them yet.”

When Culture Becomes an Asset in Negotiation

In the rooms where decisions are made, culture is not just a personal detail.
It’s a strategic resource — if you know how to use it.

1. Culture Teaches You to Read Between the Lines

If you grow up in a culture where:

  • people don’t always say “no” directly,
  • respect for elders is non-negotiable,
  • relationships matter more than emails,

you learn early to pay attention to what is not being said.

In global negotiations, that skill is gold:

  • You hear hesitation behind the formal language.
  • You feel when a delegate is uncomfortable with a proposal before they say it.
  • You sense who really influences the outcome, beyond the titles on the seating chart.

This is emotional intelligence shaped by culture.
It makes you a better listener and a more effective negotiator.

2. Hospitality as Diplomacy

From Saudi majlis culture to Arab hospitality traditions, you’re taught:

  • how to welcome people,
  • how to make them feel seen,
  • how to create safety in a room.

In international settings, this can translate into:

  • the way you bring quieter people into the discussion;
  • the side conversations you initiate that unlock deadlocks;
  • the trust you build over coffee, not just over documents.

Sometimes the most important negotiation step is not changing a paragraph.
It’s changing the temperature of the room.

3. Storytelling as Strategy

Our cultures are rich with stories—of prophets, poets, leaders, family elders.
You grow up hearing parables instead of PowerPoints.

In policy conversations, a well-chosen story:

  • makes a complex issue human,
  • connects data to lived experience,
  • cuts through jargon and goes straight to the heart.

When everyone else is drowning in acronyms, you can say:

“Let me tell you what this looks like in my grandmother’s neighborhood.”

Suddenly, the room remembers why any of this matters.

When Culture Fuels Creativity and Policy

Culture doesn’t just shape how you speak.
It shapes what you imagine is possible.

  • A Saudi architect designing public spaces that respect both community, climate, and heritage.
  • An Arab filmmaker telling stories that challenge one-dimensional portrayals of the region.
  • A young policy analyst from Jeddah or Riyadh who can see how global frameworks land on local realities—what will work, what will be rejected, what needs translation.

Your cultural lens allows you to spot blind spots:

  • A gender policy drafted without understanding local family structures.
  • A climate initiative that ignores water traditions in desert communities.
  • A youth strategy written as if all young people live online and in English.

You can say:

“On paper, this looks great. In my context, here’s where it breaks—and here’s how we can adapt it.”

That’s leadership.
Not saying “yes” to everything global, but weaving global ideas with local wisdom.

Stories From Saudi, the Arab World, and Beyond (Composite Portraits)

  • A Saudi delegate in Geneva who insists on including Arabic in side event materials, not because people can’t understand English, but because language signals who belongs in the conversation.
    Lesson: Inclusion is not just who is in the room; it’s whose language is on the table.
  • A young Arab woman at a tech policy forum who chooses to wear abaya and hijab and speak about AI ethics with full confidence. After the session, a participant tells her, “You completely changed my mental picture of who builds the future.”
    Lesson: Sometimes just existing, unapologetically, is a form of narrative change.
  • A youth leader from the region who, in a tense negotiation, suggests starting with a short personal round: “Why does this issue matter to you?” The formality breaks, and the tone shifts. The final text doesn’t give everyone everything, but it gives more than expected.
    Lesson: Culture of connection can unlock progress when technical arguments stall.

These aren’t fairy tales.
They’re the quiet ways culture shapes outcomes—far from headlines, but close to reality.

When Institutions Finally Understand This

Imagine if global institutions, forums, and boards truly understood:

  • that identity is not a “diversity checkbox”;
  • that culture is not a photo backdrop;
  • that a Saudi, Arab, African, Asian, Indigenous, or minority voice is not there to decorate the agenda, but to improve the decisions.

They would:

  • Include cultural context at the beginning of policy design, not as a “consideration” at the end.
  • Ask, “Who understands how this will land on the ground?” as seriously as they ask, “Who has the technical expertise?”
  • Stop expecting young leaders to cut off parts of themselves to be allowed in the room.

Because the reality is simple:

When your identity walks in with you—and is respected—you don’t just bring yourself.
You bring entire worlds of knowledge, story, and possibility.

That makes the room smarter.
That makes the solutions better.

For Young Leaders: You Are Not an Accident

If you’ve ever felt your identity arrive before you in a room, remember:

  • You are not there to perform a stereotype.
  • You are not there to apologize for your culture.
  • You are not there to prove you’re “different from the rest.”

You are there to:

  • bring nuance where others see a single story;
  • bring honesty where others prefer comfortable myths;
  • bring a piece of the world that would be missing without you.

You will make mistakes.
You will leave some rooms frustrated.
You will sometimes wish you could just be “a person,” not “the Saudi,” “the Arab,” “the Muslim,” “the minority.”

But over time, you will also see:

Your identity is not a limitation.
It is a lens.

Through it, you notice what others miss.
Through it, you connect dots others didn’t know existed.
Through it, you build bridges nobody else sees.

And one day, you will walk into a room that once made you feel small, and you will realize:

Your identity did not just walk in before you.
It helped build that room.

And that is the kind of leadership this generation is quietly, stubbornly, beautifully creating.