Tell us about yourself and how you got started in business
I didn’t step into entrepreneurship in the Middle East, I began long before. My foundation was built in Europe, where I spent years working as a PA & PR manager in Formula 1 before launching my own company in luxury event planning. I curated private high-end celebrations and major commercial events where precision, confidentiality and delivery under pressure were non-negotiable.
After my divorce, I took over and co-owned a restaurant in Marbella, Spain. It was a radically different business model (bricks, staff, supply chains, daily operations) and a powerful education in resilience and decision-making when both reputation and money are on the line. Those three chapters – Formula 1, luxury events, and the restaurant – trained me to adapt, to create, and to rebuild when life forces a change of direction.
What inspired you to take the leap from running a restaurant in Spain to moving to the Middle East?
I relocated to the Middle East because of my husband’s work. I didn’t arrive with a social circle or a ready-made community, I started from zero again. For the first time in my life I even joined a private members club, not for status but simply to be around people again. After years of being deeply embedded in work and networks in Europe, it was disorienting to suddenly be in a city where no one knew me. That unfamiliarity became the soil for my book. When you lose all the noise and reputation that once defined you, you hear your own inner voice very clearly. From Tapas to Towers was born exactly from that: from the gap between who I had been and who I was becoming. People often ask how I “established” myself here. The truth is, I didn’t force anything. I wrote, I built, I created, and the right people started to find me. There is power in not begging for access. When you focus on work that is aligned, it becomes a beacon instead of a request.
Your journey has required great courage and strategy; how did you get started with reinventing yourself?
Reinvention looks glamorous in hindsight, but in real time it is quiet and without applause. I didn’t reinvent because I was fearless, I reinvented because life was clearly moving me to a different chapter, and I have always trusted that current when it comes. I carry that steady sense that things have a way of arranging themselves when you keep moving. When you step out of what no longer fits, you make room for something you couldn’t see before. For me, that “something” wasn’t just a new location, it was a new direction and new opportunities that only revealed themselves once I let go of the old one.
What has been the biggest challenge you have faced in establishing yourself in the Middle East?
The biggest challenge has been building a life without an existing circle. When you arrive as an adult woman, you don’t “inherently” meet people the way you do in school or long-term cities. You start from a blank page socially and professionally. I am still very much in that process. What helped me was not chasing the feeling of being “established” but continuing to create work that lives beyond borders: the book, the retreats, on ideas that live internationally. Ironically, that wider focus is what started to create organic connections here too, without forcing anything.
Tell us about your self-published book, From Tapas to Towers.
I wrote and published From Tapas to Towers independently, but that was not the original plan. I had initially signed with a publisher, and after missing every single deadline and failing to deliver what was promised, I ended the collaboration and took the process back into my own hands. It was my first book, and I learned very quickly how not to do things, but doing it myself in the end makes the result even more meaningful. It achieved global distribution in a way that proved gatekeepers are optional. The book is now available through major retailers worldwide, including Waterstones, Foyles, Hatchards, Barnes & Noble, and even academic institutions such as Harvard. Women, media, clubs and potential partners began contacting me because of the book. They saw themselves in the story or they wanted to collaborate around it, and it has been incredible to see how a personal project can create connection and momentum on its own. The book did not just document a reinvention, it initiated one. It became the foundation for a brand, a growing community of readers and a set of new business verticals that are now unfolding from it.
You’re also launching women-only reading retreats in Europe and the UAE in 2026. Can you share the vision behind it? What will make it a game-changer?
One of those verticals is The Next Chapter Club: women-only reading retreats launching in Europe and the UAE. The thesis is simple: community is the new quiet luxury, and reading is its most elegant form. Luxury has shifted; it is no longer only the resort, the bag or the tablewith your name on it. It is access to a curated community, to conversations that change you, to spaces where you can be fully awake to your next chapter. This is why even the world’s biggest brands invest in taking their clients on curated trips, not to sell a product, but to offer a network. And although reading is our anchor, the retreats are not solely about books. They are about the right company, connection, laughter, slow mornings, long lunches, and the rare permission to do nothing without guilt. No rigid schedules. No obligations. Just like-minded women, soft structure, and space to breathe. Our reading retreats are for women in transition, expansion, or in search of their next identity. Not to escape life but to return to themselves with clarity instead of noise.
What are your plans for the year ahead?
The year ahead is about expanding what the book has already unlocked: deeper collaborations, curated partnerships and experiences that merge literature, reinvention and feminine community. I am also developing a companion project connected to the book, and in parallel I would love to finally launch a cookbook. My family and friends have been waiting for it for years, but unlike a memoir, a cookbook is a production (not just writing), so I need the right space and timing to do it well. As this next phase unfolds, I’m open to collaborating with women-focused business clubs, private communities, cultural spaces and partners who resonate with this direction and want to build within it rather than around it.
Looking back on your journey, what has been your proudest moment so far?
It is not the distribution list or the names of the retailers, it is the messages from women in other countries who read my book and then booked a ticket, applied for the job, left the life that was shrinking them, or finally started something they had postponed for years. Many even wrote to tell me they began writing their own book because mine showed them it was possible without permission or a traditional publisher. It proved to me that courage is contagious in the best possible way.
What legacy do you hope to leave?
What I want to leave behind is living proof that courage multiplies. When one woman dares to start over, ten others see themselves in her and follow. I’m at the stage of life where I only do work I truly enjoy, and I want that work to show other women that they are not “finished,” ever. And yes, I say this as someone who is already a grandmother, not the rocking-chair kind, but the kind who is still rewriting chapters and buying one-way tickets. I am only now entering the years where I feel most alive and most aligned, and that alone is proof that there is no age at which you are “done.” I don’t need to be remembered for what I owned, but for the energy I carried and what it awakened in others. I also want my children and my parents to feel proud that I kept rebuilding instead of shrinking, and especially my grandson. His eyes lit up when I handed him the first printed copy of my book; he was the first one to hold it. That moment meant more to me than any bookstore listing.
Where can readers find out more?
FROM TAPAS TO TOWERS is available through major bookstores worldwide.
Website: www.fromtapastotowers.com
Instagram: @fromtapastotowers
For collaborations: hola@fromtapastotowers.com
THE NEXT CHAPTER CLUB
Website: www.thenextchapterclub.co
Instagram: @thenextchapterclub.co
For collaborations: info@thenextchapterclub.co
