I recently had the pleasure of kicking off our International sales meeting in Dubai; a perfect location because the city’s evolution over the last century is such a powerful analogy for Avanos’ transformation journey, as I’ll share in a minute.

The meeting theme was Reaching New Heights, drawing inspiration from Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, and with our EMEA, APAC and LATAM teams together for the first time in several years, the team’s energy reflected a towering enthusiasm. It was a chance for our new International leadership team to connect our Avanos transformation priorities to their regional plans in a more tangible and specific way, and I left Dubai inspired by the team’s commitment to delivering on our priorities and vision of getting patients back to what matters.

The Power of Transformation

If you’ve never been there, Dubai is a real testament to the power of transformation and a very visible example of the outcome when a bold vision and daily execution converge.

But this wasn’t always the case. Dubai was originally a small Bedouin village with an economy dependent on fishing and pearl diving. By the early 1900s, Mikimoto of Japan had perfected cultured pearl creation, decimating one of Dubai’s leading industries. The discovery of oil in the 1960s presented an opportunity for rapid economic expansion, but the city’s leaders recognized that to ensure long-term growth, they needed to diversify Dubai’s oil-based economic portfolio by developing shipping, finance and trade sectors.

Since that time, this once-humble village has evolved into a dazzling metropolis with less than one percent of its economy reliant on oil. From the towering Burj Khalifa, to ambitious infrastructure projects such as the Palm Islands, Dubai stands as a shining example of the results that can be achieved when a bold transformation vision is paired with diligence in execution.