Abdullah Al-Emadi

Dr Abdullah Ismail Al-Emadi is a journalist, author and trainer at the Al Jazeera Media Institute and holds a doctorate in digital media. His work has included leading the Gulf desk at Al Jazeera Net, editing Islam Online and serving as a media adviser and communications director at the Ministry of Education.

He was born and raised in Freej Al-Asmakh in a family of eight with a limited income. His father worked first as a merchant and tailor of traditional clothing and later at the Ministry of Information. He attended Khalid bin Al-Walid Primary School, Qatar Preparatory School and Al-Istiqlal Secondary School.

At secondary school, his interest in medicine led him to choose the science track. When the time came to select a scholarship destination, however, the Ministry of Education was not sending medical students to the United States, where he hoped to study. Faced with a choice between medicine and studying in the United States, he selected a related discipline that would allow him to pursue both interests as closely as possible: biomedical equipment engineering.

His years abroad refined his character as well as his education, allowing him to exchange knowledge and experience with people from many countries.

At home and in the neighbourhood, he was surrounded by ambitious, diligent people who advanced steadily towards success. His elder brother, His Excellency Mohammed Ismail Al Emadi, became Qatar’s Ambassador to Vietnam, while his younger brother, Nasser Ismail Al Emadi, became an engineer with the Lekhwiya force. The three brothers took responsibility for their own development because, after their father left trade, his salary was the family’s sole source of income.

As a child, he mixed with bright, accomplished contemporaries who later held important posts in Qatar and abroad. They included Abdullah Al-Ansari, Director of the Medical Office in London; Ahmed Abdullah Al-Jamal, Director-General of the General Authority of Customs; Jamal Al-Jamal, Deputy General Manager of Qatar International Islamic Bank; and Dr Abdul Razzaq Al-Emadi, an ophthalmology consultant at Hamad Hospital, among many others.

His move into civilian work brought a significant shift through educational administration. In 2005, during the second year of Qatar’s independent-schools initiative, he was appointed to manage Abu Bakr Al-Siddiq Independent Preparatory School. He achieved much with the school and gained still more from its teaching and administrative staff before leaving in 2009.

The third stage of his professional career took him to the office of His Excellency Saad Al Mahmoud, former Minister of Education and Higher Education, where he served as a media adviser and expert and as Director of the Ministry’s Communications and Media Office.

In late 2010, after Islam Online had moved its headquarters from Cairo to Doha and its affairs had stabilised, he became the site’s editor-in-chief. His belief that a person should change workplaces every five years later prompted him to seek another professional stage.

Throughout his education and career, he met people who left a lasting mark on his character and direction. One was Haidar Quffa, his Arabic teacher in the second year at Qatar Preparatory School. The teacher encouraged, corrected and guided his early attempts at writing, playing a formative role in the journalism and authorship that followed.

While studying in the United States, he met older students who became like elder brothers, including Kamal Al-Din from Algeria and Imad from Jordan. His contemporaries included Dr Mohammed Al-Naimi, later Director of the Community College, and Dr Ali Al-Ibrahim, Vice-President of the International Network for Social Responsibility, among many others.

Working with Dr Yousef Al-Bassam, owner of Al-Bassam Schools in Dammam, Saudi Arabia, also influenced his career. Over five years managing Abu Bakr Al-Siddiq Independent School with him, he learned how firmness in administration could be combined with respect and appreciation. Al-Bassam also encouraged his interest in travel, research and scientific conferences. Through parents, teachers and pupils, the work exposed him to a wide range of personalities.

Guidance from Nasser Mohammed Al-Othman helped him establish a steady path before he entered professional writing in late 1994. His daily column continued for more than twenty years before becoming a weekly feature under the fixed title “Atyaf”.

His career has produced achievements across several sectors. In the 1990s, he chaired the Board of Directors of the Doha Youth Centre, then a national landmark in youth work, a civilised cultural presence and a destination for visiting officials responsible for youth, sport and culture. He also sustained a journalistic career from 1994 onwards, writing for several media outlets in Qatar and abroad.

Through Al Jazeera Net, he managed a website that taught Arabic to non-native speakers. He also established and managed the Al Jazeera Encyclopedia on the same platform.

Believing that knowledge, learning and experience derive their value from being documented and passed to future generations, he published seven works intended to enrich Qatari and Arab libraries. The first was “Qatari Press towards Digital”, issued by Hamad Bin Khalifa University Press in 2017. It examines Qatar’s transition from daily print journalism to digital publishing, assessing the current position and the economic, media and audience benefits expected from a complete transformation.

He also published “Things That Happy People Do”, a collection of lessons drawn from everyday experience. He recorded them as concise, accessible reflections from which readers could derive practical benefit in their own lives.

His third publication, “This Book is for You”, considers affinities between people, envy and jealousy, the choice of friends and the ways in which unhappiness or happiness are created. Drawing on thirty years of experience and life lessons, its style allows readers to take away an idea, insight or benefit from a story, event or lived experience.

The fourth publication, “Lighthouses”, recounts episodes from individual lives and draws an idea, moral or lesson from each story in clear, accessible prose without unnecessary detail. It invites readers to contemplate history and use its instructive fragments to understand the present and build the future.

The fifth publication, “God Sets an Example”, illuminates selected pearls of the Holy Qur’an through storytelling, links with everyday life and human interaction, and other approaches intended to guide readers towards what is right and strengthen faith in the heart.

His sixth book, “Don’t Be a Chess Piece”, leads the reader through connected reflections on self-worth, respect and personal agency. Its central argument is that each person should decide, act and plan independently rather than allow others to direct life as though moving a piece on a chessboard. In other words, none of us should be like a pawn on a chessboard.

The publication “The Art of the Article” provides aspiring writers with what they need to learn the craft of the article and publish their work on journalistic and other platforms.

The publication “Why We Work 8 Hours” brings together administrative subjects and questions distilled from years of management and leadership experience, offering material of value to any manager or leader.

Many obstacles and setbacks slowed or redirected his career. At the end of 1984, early in his life, he left Qatar for a distant country and an unfamiliar culture, confronting the pressures of study, separation and daily life at once. The companionship of other young expatriates helped him withstand the decisive first year, when a scholarship student either persevered or returned home.

Another challenge was balancing family, employment and voluntary service. He was simultaneously a new father, an officer and a volunteer at the Doha Youth Centre, and for several years he could not always distribute his time and effort fairly among the three. Experience and the cooperation of those around him eventually helped him reconcile military work and fatherhood with managing the Centre, whose Board of Directors he chaired from mid-1995 to 1999.

He also faced difficulty when he entered education to manage an independent preparatory school without previous experience in the field. His love of learning and teaching, and his admiration for the original vision of educational reform and independent schools, drew him into the project with enthusiasm and commitment. When he believed that the initiative had departed from its intended course, he reconsidered his position and chose to withdraw.

Experience across varied and widely separated fields helped him overcome the difficulty of entering areas in which he did not yet possess specialised expertise.