Ali Abdo, Chief Partnership Officer at ESG&: Each week, My Morning Routine looks at how a successful member of the community starts their day, and then throws in a couple of random business questions just for fun. This week, we’re speaking with Ali Abdo (LinkedIn), chief partnership officer at ESG&.

My name is Ali Abdo. I am currently the chief partnership officer at ESG&, a company that specializes in providing technical solutions for sustainability. I’m also a bit of an adventurer with multiple Guinness World Records and I have a project called The Ride to 2030.

My day job revolves around expanding the impact of ESG& in the MEA region, be it through finding new partners or by creating new opportunities. Our main goal is to help different entities reduce their environmental impact and communicate their environmental record with more transparency and accuracy. A large part of my job is taking part in meetings, negotiations, and finding common ground with different partners across industries — we used to be focused primarily on the banking sector, but we’re moving towards the industrial sector as well.

Regulations covering environmental sustainability have caused more and more firms and organizations to begin reporting and measuring the environmental impact of their operations. However, many firms lack the manpower, the budget, and the time to do this effectively. We created a solution that helps these entities achieve that goal with the least costs and time. Our platform — dubbed Climate Edge — helps firms measure and reduce their carbon footprints and communicate their results.

There’s more awareness among businesses over the importance of sustainability and the importance of community impact as well. More entities are interested in sustainability and are working to contribute towards sustainable goals.

I’m the first Arab to set a world record on a motorcycle and the first Arab to set a world record on an electric vehicle. Ahead of the COP27 conference in Egypt, I organized a trip called “The Ride to COP 27” to help raise awareness for climate action and sustainability. During this trip, I visited all of Egypt’s governorates on my electric motorcycle, setting the world records for the longest ever trip on an electric motorcycle, and for the longest trip on an electric motorcycle inside one country. I then took part in COP27 to talk about some of the stories and challenges I accumulated during my trip.

Last year, I drove my motorcycle from Egypt to the UAE, setting the record for most cities visited by an electric motorcycle. We also got recognized as one of the most important initiatives in climate action.

This year, we’re going global — our journey will begin in Dubai and will pass through ten countries, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, Turkey, Georgia, and finally Azerbaijan. We want to teach people about climate change, highlight success stories from communities we visit, and shed light on some of the challenges we still face — all while setting the Guiness record for most countries visited with an electric motorcycle.

The very first thing I do in the morning is I have my two cups of coffee. I wake up around 6am and check my newsletters for the latest trends, then I check my emails and prioritize the most urgent emails. The rest of the team signs in at around 9am and I start receiving phone calls and following up with a number of people around 10am. Because we work with people based in different time zones, meetings could happen a bit later than my usual working hours.

I have to be done with all the donkeywork by 12pm and get it out of the way while I have the energy at the beginning of the day. That’s my one constant every day, other than watching a show every night before going to sleep.

To stay focused, I have to write everything that goes on in general — in a meeting or otherwise. To be organized in a world as dynamic as this is really challenging, but you can try to be resilient. That’s how you can observe everything around you and keep track of everything. I use a number of different tools to keep things organized, but it’s mainly about being resilient for me.

My next goal is to help at least 1 mn people play a role in helping counter climate change. That’s both my personal and my professional goal. While I have a wide number of goals in general, this is my main one.

Work-life balance is something I find essential. Last year, I was doing my master’s degree, going on a trip, and I was in charge of 12 different projects for IBM — and I still managed to achieve highest honors. But I really appreciate work-life balance, and I don’t think we should live to work. My life and my family come before work, always. It’s something I constantly try to keep in check and make sure my work isn’t impacting the time I get to spend with my family. It’s part of the reason why I work remotely.

When I need to relax and switch off, I play video games. They help me reboot my brain after a hard day’s work so that I can start fresh the next time I have to do a heavy task. Call of Duty is my game of choice.

I highly recommend listening to El Da7ee7. I like to watch shows about history and science as well, but I haven’t been able to read as much since having children. I still read, but it’s mostly technical stuff.

The best piece of advice I’ve ever gotten came from one of my old managers. He said that I have to dedicate a part of my life solely for myself. “You can’t do everything for other people,” he said. And my personal piece of advice for people is that “we have to accept and we have to adapt.”

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