My story

Dear reader,

You might think this is a strange profile for an economist. Before policy and reports, there was art — illustration, design, motion graphics. I worked in that world long before 2014, when I entered Fine Arts at the Lebanese University.

Life shifted. I left Fine Arts and turned to English Literature and Poetry, where a single line could feel heavier than a book. By 2016, restless, I added Business Economics while still working in design and research. You know that feeling of carrying too many worlds at once — that was me.

In 2019, I joined the Central Bank of Lebanon for a special internship. The financial crisis ended it quickly, and my path bent toward policy. By 2020, I was at the United Nations ESCWA. Suddenly my words weren’t just mine; they were shaping reports and discussions far beyond me.

Arizona followed — a scholarship, a master’s in Sustainability, and a community I led. Then Milan, 2022: a degree in Economics and Politics, but also a reckoning. Databases, dashboards, visualization, and automation became more than technical work — they became ways to tell stories. AI entered the picture too, and I realized technology could give policy both clarity and imagination.

In 2023, Beirut pulled me back to strategic planning and national development. And now in 2025, here you are, reading this, and here I am — gathering the fragments: the artist, the economist, the builder, the storyteller. The projects I build, the stories I tell, and the tools that make complexity human.

Yours,
Bilal