COVER STORY
SCRIPTING SUCCESS
In conversation with Joe Tabet, founder of JT+Partners, on lessons learned, chasing dreams, and how to level up yourself with challenges By Tamara Pupic Joe Tabet fidgets in his armchair as he recalls a vivid moment in his past when he was sealing envelopes –75 of them, to be precise– in front of an Emirates Post branch in Dubai. The year is 2002, and the 20-something Tabet was sending his professional bio to 75 addresses of architecture and design firms across the UAE. Having just arrived from Lebanon, he remembers having only US$500 to his name. “A local man who worked there told me, ‘Son, I see that you are searching for a job, and that you are eager to find a job, and you will, for sure, get a job with what you have in your hands,’”
Tabet says. “Then, I started receiving phone calls, but I said that I didn’t leave my family and my country to get just any experience, but that I needed to get the right experience. I chose an international company with the lowest salary I had ever had, because I was able to see what I needed to start with, in order to fly later on.” And Tabet’s career has certainly taken wing since then- today, Tabet is the founder of JT+Partners, a multi-disciplinary consultancy in architecture, master planning and integrated design practices with three offices –Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Beirut– and projects around
the world, from Morocco to Seychelles, from India and Sri Lanka to Portugal, from Greece to the whole of Middle East and many African countries. Tabet looks to be in good spirits when mentioning his 70-person team, who he credits as have the driving force in increasing JT & Partners’s revenue more than six times since launching the company in 2015. “All this has been created in just five years,” Tabet says, his humility allowing him to showcase only a tiny bit of the pride that he must actually feel. As I sit with Tabet in a conference room at JT+Partners’ office in Dubai, I can only
August 2020
| 21
