Could you share a little about your background and current work?
I am originally from Syria. I moved to the Netherlands on my own when I was 16, without knowing the language. Those first months were about survival, not creativity.
Somewhere between learning Dutch and figuring out how things worked here, I realized that the thing I kept coming back to was visual storytelling—how brands look, how they make people feel and how a single image can change someone’s perception.
At 19, I work as a creative media director. I direct media at events like Milan Design Week and Paris Fashion Week and develop social strategies for brands. I recently started writing a recurring column for a local newspaper that lands in 35,000 homes every week.
What made you choose Vogue College of Fashion for your studies?
The fashion education offerings I was finding were either too technical or too vague. Then I found Vogue College of Fashion and something clicked.
It was the only place that treated creative direction as its own discipline, not as an add‑on to something else. I also loved that College’s programs are connected to the real industry and don’t just teach theory in a classroom.
The Vogue name gave me confidence that the College was serious. What motivated me enroll was the understanding that the College had of the path that I wanted to take. I wanted to understand creative direction at a deeper level—not just how to make things look good, but how to build visual systems that shape the way people perceive a brand.
If you had to pick one word to describe the online learning experience, what would it be and why?
Grounding. I had a lot of creative energy before the course, but it was all over the place. Vogue College grounded that energy. It gave me a clear way to think about direction, visual systems and about how to build a world for a brand.
That grounding is what allows me to walk into a room full of senior designers at Milan Design Week and feel like I belong there.
What specific lessons from your courses have influenced your approach as a creative media director?
There was a moment in the course where it became clear that creative direction is not about taste, but about intention. Every color, every crop and every composition has a reason.
Before Vogue College, I would make something and hope it worked. Now I know why it works.
That shift changed how clients see me. When you can explain the reasoning behind a visual decision, people trust you. They stop seeing you as someone who makes things pretty and start seeing you as someone who has a strategy.
Can you share an example of an assignment that you particularly enjoyed?
We had to develop a complete creative direction for a brand—moodboard, visual identity, campaign concept. I remember working on it and losing track of time completely. Not because it was difficult, but because it was the first time a school was training me for the exact thing I wanted to do with my life.
I still use the same process from that assignment when I onboard new clients today. It became my foundation.
You’ve worked on major international events such as Milan Design Week and Paris Fashion Week. Have there been any learnings from the course that prove particularly valuable when working within the fashion events space?
At Palazzo dei Giureconsulti during Milan Design Week, there are over 100 designers in one building. Everyone is competing for attention at the same time. What Vogue College taught me is how to find visual clarity in that chaos and how to tell one story so clearly that it cuts through everything around it.
I remember my first year at the event, standing there with my laptop, directing content in real time and thinking, “I know how to do this because someone taught me how to think about it before I had to do it in real life.”
You’re also studying marketing at Harvard Business School. How has the Vogue online course complemented or influenced your marketing studies?
Vogue College shaped how I see brands. Harvard is shaping how I measure them. Together they let me sit in a space that most people cannot access. I can develop the creative direction for a campaign and then read the performance report and know what to adjust.
At Vogue College I learned to trust my eye. At Harvard I learn to back it up with data. One without the other would not have brought me to where I am now.
How has the course contributed to your professional growth?
Before the course, I had taste. After the course, I had direction. That direction is what gave me the confidence to call myself a creative media director at 19 and mean it.
When I sit across from a client twice my age and they ask me how I see their brand, I have an answer. Vogue College did not just teach me about fashion, it taught me how to take my own vision seriously. Once I did that, other people started taking it seriously too.
