Omid Honari

I remember walking into the auditorium and just being overwhelmed. The passion, the buzz, the excitement of a rock concert. This is what it’s all about. 

My name is Omid Honari. I’m the General Manager for Sales and Marketing for the EMEA region, which encompasses the Middle East, Africa, Pakistan and the Russia CIS region. I’m also the director of Global Sponsor Engagement. 

When and how did you come to be working with Navitas? 

It was 2012 when I joined Navitas. Quite a few years ago now, I heard that Navitas wanted to place a regional manager over in the UAE, where I had lived for a few years. Very interestingly, I had heard little glimmers of growing conversation about just how well Navitas continued to do in the international education space, the kind of education that it’s providing and the kind of global reach, as it sort of continued to be at that phase, in a rapid expansion that it was spreading across. I became very interested in working for the organisation and had a background in international education, amongst other things. 

And so, it felt like it would have been a really great move for me. And I remember speaking to Tony Cullen and others and it really was from the first conversation that we had a very comfortable, nice feeling. It’s very rare that that you immediately, from the first set of interactions onwards, feel very at home within an organisation, but it was certainly the case for me. And that’s, that’s an absolute blessing. 

What is one of your favourite memories working at Navitas? 

The Navitas journey for me over the past twelve, twelve and a half years has been absolutely peppered with wonderful memories. And I say that with an uncontrollable smile. And anyone who’s worked for Navitas, with Navitas, alongside Navitas will know it’s what we do. We generate fantastic memories, not just the opportunities for our students, the partnerships with our university partners, with our agents on list, but the team and associates a fantastic set of memories. 

So, it becomes an almost impossible task to pinpoint any one. I mean, it wouldn’t be doing justice to years of cooperation, collaboration and service to pinpoint one, but I’ll, I’ll do my best. It was very, very early in my tenure. And I mean, we’re going back 12 years now. 

I had heard before joining the organisation, it’s the stuff of industry legend, that Navitas Business Partner Conferences, the BPC as they’re now known as and abbreviated to, are legendary. They’re industry leading and they’re industry leading to the point where folks just don’t even bother imitating the format.  

So, it was very early into my tenure and I, you know, received an invitation to go. And that year, 2012, as I’m sure some people will remember, it was in KL in Malaysia. And I remember getting to the conference and checking in. And of course you see others, suitcases checking in, business travellers and the knowledge that they’re there for the same purpose…  

However, it was the next day at the kick-off of the conference. Wow! I remember walking into the auditorium and just being overwhelmed by hundreds of folks. The passion, the buzz, the excitement, the camaraderie. I mean it, it was palpable. It, it was a very unique experience for me, having heard about the BPC, walking into one and just being hit by this wall. And the atmosphere had the excitement of a rock concert and the, the sort of serious undertones of, of camaraderie that you couldn’t imagine. 

You hear about the partnerships, you raise the idea of the closeness of sort of these generational multi-decade partnerships. But actually to witness it come into a room under one roof is something very, very special. 

How has working at Navitas made an impact on your life?  

Working at Navitas has had a very good and a very unique set of impacts on my life, personally. I think that the organisation…and we hear so much about different organisations laying claim to various aspects of positive culture. But for me, one of the great and unique things about Navitas is the opportunity to grow. 

Personally, I look around the office in which I sit, and you have people who have joined, as you know, for instance, junior or entry level officers, who have now been promoted through hard work, through this sort of atmosphere of a meritocracy, to positions of great responsibility, and they’re thriving and enjoying. You can see the impact it’s had sort of hand-in-hand with their personal life. 

For me, it’s been much the same. The opportunity for growth and the opportunity to perform, to be recognised for performance, the opportunity to grow along the way in the formal and informal professional development opportunities. I think that’s something quite unique. 

Additional to that, I heard a very difficult-to-hear conversation recently, an analysis I should say, about the percentage of people on planet Earth who have a job versus the percentage of people in the world who have a career. And the analysis was a sort of a staggering comparison of the actual meaning and differentials between the two. I think that when you see people become part of the culture of Navitas, they perform, they establish themselves, they drive forward, they work within the entire ecosystem. You can see careers developing, and when you see careers developing, you see personal growth. You see people advance in their life, gain greater momentum and comfort within their home, family situations and so on. 

This is not an organisation where people dip their toes in and dip their toes out. It’s somewhere you really do have an opportunity to aspire to the best professional version of yourself, and that’s supported by leadership, management, peers across all facets of the organisation. And that’s great, and it’s also a lot of fun. 

What are your key professional achievements during your time at Navitas? 

During my time at Navitas, we’ve gone through some great highs, some real highlights – when the world was abuzz with the flavour of international education and student mobility and everything that was happening. And of course, we’ve been proud to be part of an organisation that’s led the charge in terms of doing really well at the traditional values of international education, meanwhile, looking to innovate and do new things. Wonderful things. 

But I think that the real test of strength and character comes not in the easy times, but in the tough times. And we’ve lived through those challenges multiple times in recent years. It’s almost a dirty word now, but the pandemic, we all remember it for better or for worse, usually for worse. It was tough. It was really, really tough. You literally and figuratively show up to the office and when you could get to the office and every single thing you knew about your professional endeavour, that of your team, that of your colleagues was entirely disrupted. 

The way that the entire organisation from the individual college to folks in the Global Marketing team and onwards and onwards, banded together and was not taking it lying down, was entirely solution focused. 

How are we going to continue to serve our partners, how are we going to continue to serve our students – was remarkable. It was an opportunity not to sit back and be passively affected by global circumstances. 

I think that that was remarkable. For my regions, my area of responsibilities, the team did remarkably well. We were growing in terms of recruitment numbers and reputation during the pandemic and it was unheard of. But it wasn’t an accident. It was the result of an incredibly inspiring, natural, organically occurring, gelling together of very active people working really, really hard. 

So, I think that we’ve received, you know, regionally a number of accolades. A few years ago won the Forbes Middle East Education Award for the service to government-sponsored students, which is an area which the Middle East team particularly specialises in. 

I like those awards because it does show the team that the industry recognises their hard work – their out of hours, their weekends, their evenings, wonderful and deserved, and the whole organisation deserves them. But it’s the result of persevering through challenges that sometimes get ramped up and sometimes just happen on a day-to-day basis. It’s those moments of achievement and accomplishment through the most otherwise disheartening of times, that’s absolutely fantastic to witness and be a part of. 

A friend of mine said to me a little while ago – who also works within the industry – that as people within the international recruitment space, our ability to cause and celebrate milestones is not always as good as it should be. Sometimes we should allow ourselves that space to stop, breathe and say, ‘well, this was wonderful’ and look forward with renewed energy to the next phase. 

So, I think within that paradigm, it’s very important for me to say that we have a beautiful logo, set of celebrations and acknowledgments of 30 years. But, we all owe it within this organisation, and beyond, to ourselves to pause and really reflect on what that means. That’s really something. 

Thirty years of continued achievement, continued service to this noble cause of education is so monumental and wonderful that I think congratulations are due to everyone who’s been part of the journey, right from the founders up until everyone else who’s been part of it. It’s my sincere hope that I’ll be around to see that 30 turn into a 60 and we celebrate the next epoch together as well.