The answer lives in this podcast
How did Nourhan Farhat come to hold the combined roles of strategy, people, and ventures at Kareem?
Nourhan Farhat joined Kareem as Head of Corporate Strategy and Chief of Staff. Ventures was added because Kareem's smaller business units — including Kareem Box, Shops, Bikes, Dine Out, and tenant partners — were closely tied to central strategy decisions. The People role was introduced as a temporary fix while the position was vacant; that temporary arrangement has now lasted four years.
From one role to three: how each scope was added
The starting point was clear: a corporate strategy mandate, with Chief of Staff responsibilities layered on top. As Farhat explains in Beyond the Deck, the path from there to a triple remit was driven less by a deliberate org design than by operational logic.
Ventures came first, and it came naturally. Kareem's smaller business units — Kareem Box, Shops, Bikes, Dine Out, and its tenant partners — were so intertwined with strategy that keeping them in a separate silo made little sense. The decisions that shaped those units fed directly into central strategic planning, so the two functions were merged under one owner.
People followed through a different path. The Head of People role was temporarily vacant, and Farhat stepped in to cover it. What was framed as a short-term fix has remained unchanged for four years — a detail she shares candidly in the episode.
The conviction behind the People role: culture and strategy cannot be separated
The longevity of that "temporary" arrangement is no accident. Farhat holds a firm view that culture and strategy must be aligned — and that separating accountability for the two is a structural risk. Owning both gives her a direct line between strategic intent and the people systems that either enable or undermine it.
That conviction is one of the central threads of this conversation on Beyond the Deck — and it shapes how Farhat approaches all three of her portfolios simultaneously.
"Culture eats strategy for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Strategies could be great on paper, but unless you really fix the operating model, the incentives, the entire culture of the company, the values of the company, I think that's the make it or break it."
Nourhan Farhat — VP of People, Strategy and Ventures, Kareem.
Farhat spent 10 years in management consulting — including at Roland Berger, which she credits as the moment she first understood what consulting was. She joined Kareem as Head of Corporate Strategy and Chief of Staff, drawn by a desire to own deliverables and operate with real P&L responsibility rather than advise from the outside. Her remit has since grown to cover Ventures and People, a scope she now holds as a coherent whole rather than three separate jobs.
The through-line of Farhat's career — engineering, a decade in consulting, then a corporate leap into Kareem — is explored in full in Beyond the Deck, hosted by Dorival Bettencourt, Regional Managing Director at Oliver Wyman.
See also
What does Nourhan Farhat believe is the most important trait to look for when hiring?
Farhat says that drive and resilience are her make-or-break criteria when evaluating candidates. She argues that skills can always be trained and learned on the job, but these two qualities cannot be taught.
How does Kareem approach AI integration across its business?
Kareem designated 2019 as its 'Year of AI' — before the current wave of AI hype — embedding AI into core systems like ride-hailing demand prediction and dispatching systems.
What is Kareem's founding purpose and how is it expressed operationally?
When co-founders Mudassir and Magnus started Kareem in 2012, their stated purpose was to simplify and improve the lives of people, and to build an awesome organisation.
Key takeaways
- Farhat's original mandate at Kareem was Head of Corporate Strategy and Chief of Staff — everything else was added on top of that foundation.
- Ventures was integrated because Kareem's smaller business units (including Kareem Box, Shops, and Bikes) were too intertwined with central strategy to sit separately.
- The People role began as a temporary cover for a vacant position — and has remained with Farhat for four years.
- Her belief that culture and strategy must be owned together is the underlying logic that makes the combined remit coherent rather than simply accidental.
Nourhan Farhat goes further on how she manages the intersection of strategy, people, and culture at Kareem — in a conversation that covers the full arc from engineering student to VP of three functions.
Listen to the episode on Listenly