Catching Up with Past Caravaners: Where Are They Now?
By: Nesrien Abdelkader
@NesrienAshraf
In nearly 100 years of operation, The Caravan has seen many students come and go and their time at the newsroom has helped many former members achieve success.
Founded in 1921, The Caravan has been the voice of the AUC community for years. The constantly changing team is made up entirely of students from different majors.
Maha Hussein, former Editor-in-Chief, was unable to find a job in journalism in Egypt after her graduation in 1985, so she chose to go into advertising and video production.
She has been happily working as a freelance video executive producer, English copywriter and marketing and communications consultant with local, regional and European clients since leaving her 9-to-5 desk job at the Cairo branch of Publi-Graphics advertising agency in 1991.
The Caravan provided Hussein and other students with a voice. This was especially necessary during the time when AUC students came under attack by opposition newspapers, particularly Al Shaab.
“Some of the friendships that were formed in that tiny office at the Tahrir campus live on to this day. Our personal stories might have taken us to different corners of the Earth, different career paths, lifestyles, etc., but the camaraderie lives on,” she said.
Nagla Nofal, class of 1992, started off as a reporter and then assisted in English production. She is now a Managing Director at Premier Marketing Group (PMG Middle East & Africa), a marketing consultancy firm.
The years she spent at The Caravan in the basement of the Social Sciences building in the old Tahrir Greek campus gave Nofal the skills she needed to be successful later on in life. It taught her how to communicate within a team, work under pressure and meet deadlines, face challenges with colleagues, communicate with others without being shy, be responsible toward others and, most importantly, to be alert at any given time of what’s going on around her.
“I got my first ever job because of The Caravan. I was hired after two months of my graduation as a communications specialist…I was able, despite my young age, to communicate with all different managerial levels, as well as junior positions, to be able to get all the news from various departments and create content that was enjoyed by everyone,” she said.
Nofal prides herself on teaching many fresh graduates, whom she has hired over the years, to be successful senior consultants in the marketing and public relations fields. She has also traveled all over Europe, Australia, the US and the Far East over the past 25 years.
Class of 1993’s News Editor Nevine Abul Dahab has gone on to become a teacher at Cairo American College.
Since leaving The Caravan, Abul Dahab has worked in journalism, advertising, editing and proof-reading, translating, writing, voice-over assignments and recently acting.
“[The Caravan] was adjacent to my major as journalism and mass communication. Being a news editor also created the leader in me,” she said.
Miriam Amir, class of 2002, spent three semesters with The Caravan working as a reporter, English copy editor and then a news editor.
Since graduating, Amir has worked in advertising, pharmaceutical marketing and most recently the education sector. She has also received a global company award for marketing a new pharmaceutical product in the Egyptian market while working for Novartis Consumer Health.
Amir is currently job hunting and focusing on building a family travel blog.
“I am very happy with my life now. I have a lovely family, great friends, interesting experiences and career satisfaction. The more I learn, the more humble I tend to feel, because there is so much out there in the world and to me it is all just fascinating,” she said.
The newsroom brought Amir cherished friendships and served as a launching pad into the real world for her.
“Being a member of The Caravan taught me how to work in a team environment where we are all pursuing one goal – to make the printer’s deadline,” she said.
Former Editor-in-Chief Yasmine Halima, class of 2002, is now the kindergarten to grade 12 Curriculum and Assessment Coordinator at Hayah International Academy, International Baccalaureate (IB) Psychology Examiner and serves Alwan and Awtar, a non-governmental organization that offers artistic and educational activities to children, within the framework of psychosocial director on a volunteer and consultant basis.
“The closest achievement to my heart is being able to participate in the creation of a loving family that is a backbone to one another as we thrive on values and are also supportive of our individual differences and evolution,” Halima said.
Halima also explained that The Caravan newsroom gave her the skills and abilities that she needed to succeed.
“The newsroom was our anchor. It was where energy poured in, support was guaranteed, ideas were encouraged and pathways were formed…the attention to detail and the focus on quality of product/service over quantity was born, for me, in that room,” Halima said.
The Caravan’s 2003 Editor-in-Chief Sarah Elmeshad now teaches journalism, creative writing and psychology at Hayah International Academy while working as a freelance journalist for Nature Middle East Custom Reports.
Elmeshad’s fondest memories are of her time in the newsroom which gave her the opportunity to attend a press conference by Gordon Summer, Sting, interview Gamal Mubarak and intern at the Associated Press with another independent journalist.
“I was working in The Caravan when 9/11 happened so I covered a lot of the responses from the streets of downtown Cairo. All these experiences have shaped who I am today. I met my husband when working on a story for The Caravan. I met my best friend, who has actually helped me grow and explore the awesome field of science journalism, through The Caravan,” she said.
Arabic Managing Editor Heba Fouad, class of 2017, now works for the United Nations Migration Agency (IOM). She plans to pursue a career in documentary filmmaking and create her a visual storytelling platform based on human interest stories.
Fouad has received a Student TV News Award of Excellence from Creative Awards for one of her short feature stories and worked as a producer at the talk show Maakom Mona El Shazly.
“I always remember the days where I would enter the newsroom at 9 am and leave a few hours later only to realize it has become 12 am. I’ve never kept track of time when I was inside the newsroom, not because of the work stress, but more because it felt like home, my room,” Fouad said.
News and Multimedia Editor Hussein Moataz, class of 2017, is now finishing up his master’s degree and working as a teaching assistant in AUC.
“I found my happiness in The Caravan newsroom. I owe so much to the The Caravan although it gave me so much stress,” he said.
Judy Taha, the newspaper’s most recent editor-in-chief graduate from 2018, currently works as an editor at Daily News Egypt. Prior to that, she wrote for What Women Want.
Taha is pursuing her master’s degree and is planning to teach in the future. She wants to work in news but may not stay local.
“All journalism students owe a lot to The Caravan and it offers a professional environment that is nonexistent in reality,” she said.
Being an editor for AUC’s newspaper gave Taha an edge above others in her work environment. She explained that people treated her less like a fresh graduate because she already knew what she was doing.
Former Managing English Editor Deena Sabry also graduated in 2018. She is now doing her master’s at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, her dream school, and working as a freelance reporter in the Bay Area, California.
“The Caravan definitely helped me out with getting a job at Nile FM and with my graduate school application,” she said.
Some of The Caravan’s most prominent alumni include journalist and broadcast presenter Lamis El Hadidi, TV presenter Mona El Shazly and Louis Greiss, writer and journalist.
