may hanna

Brand Manger, Brand Strategy, and Insights in Dubai, United Arab Emirates

may hanna

Brand Manger, Brand Strategy, and Insights in Dubai, United Arab Emirates

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May was born in Beirut, grew up in Saudi Arabia, California and Florida, and now lives in Dubai. She mastered being a 3rd culture kid, and pursued more education as an adult in Integrated Marketing Communications and Corporate Innovation.

In June 2017, May became a brand and advertising manager at Apple, looking after Apple Watch, Apple Fitness+, Mac, Apple Music, Apple TV, Apple TV+, Values, Education, Enterprise and Retail.

Her previous life was 15 years in a variety of mental institutions cleverly-disguised as advertising agencies. At OgilvyOne, she was a Strategic Planning Director for a portfolio of accounts including Dove, IBM and Dubai Tourism. May also led brand strategy (and ferociously monopolized post-its) in Leo Burnett, MullenLowe and Y&R for McDonald's, Nestle, Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, Groupe Bel, du, ADCB and The Dubai International Film Festival.

May has been dedicated to spreading knowledge about behavioral insight, human-centered strategic and creative thinking, and effective marketing campaigns. She’s founded effectiveness committees, and developed training modules aimed at spreading knowledge to her colleagues and clients. The committee drove her agency from a 100+ ranked agency office, to becoming ranked 14th global within a year.

To foster innovation, and find unicorns, she’s mentored entrepreneurs and startups to help their ideas receive funding. To-date, they are still work-in-progress billionaires.

She strongly believes that creativity is intelligence having fun, and that applying creative solutions delivers innovation and business results. As a result, her work has been recognized with 70+ awards by the Effies, Cannes Lions, and the Dubai Lynx amongst others. Some were gold awards, which probably explains why the agency kept them.

When she’s not referring to herself in the 3rd person, May’s traveling, taking photographs, playing the guitar, painting, or making stuff up at improv theater. She’s also novice sailor who spends plenty of time in the sea…she’s still discovering how to stay on the boat.

  • Work
    • Apple
  • Education
    • Notre Dame University
    • Stanford Graduate School of Business