Magdolin Boukhary

In this story

1. Under her father's desk
2. Learning not to reproduce herself
3. Different businesses, different questions
4. The numbers and the person
5. A candidate wanted to see the office
6. Both sides of the conversation
7. The organisation behind the charging network
8. The coach who accepted coffee
9. Opportunity that extends beyond one appointment
10. A practice of listening and learning

Under her father's desk

Before Magdolin Boukhary worked in human resources, she watched someone else conduct interviews. In her conversation with Oliver Helvin for JOH Partners, she recalls visiting her father's office after school and sitting under his desk while he questioned applicants. The questions fascinated her. Afterwards, she wanted to know why he had asked them and how they connected with the role a person wanted. She remembers an interviewing style more direct and less approachable than the one she would later practise.

That memory gives her professional interest a particular beginning: a child listening to the exchange between a decision-maker and someone hoping for an opportunity. Boukhary describes the experience as the start of her curiosity about people, capability and HR. She does not present her own approach as a simple continuation of her father's methods. Her account moves from observing the questions to asking what they were intended to discover.

Other published conversations place that childhood inside a supportive family. In her Economic Times HR interview, she credits her parents with encouraging her wish to lead. Leader's Mic describes her father's guidance and her mother's emphasis on confidence, responsibility and independence. Those accounts connect ambition with encouragement at home, rather than treating her corporate career as something that began only with a first appointment.

Learning not to reproduce herself

In the JOH Partners interview, Boukhary sets out values that include uniqueness, meaningful work, authenticity, accountability and a willingness to face challenges. Her explanation becomes more revealing when she admits that she did not always apply them consistently. Earlier in her career, she expected members of her team to match her own intensity and approach. She could be hard on them because she wanted them to perform as she did.

She describes having to question that expectation. If she believed individuals were different, why was she asking everyone to resemble her? Her response was to pay more attention to where people were and where they wanted to go. The change she describes is not a retreat from demanding work. It is a distinction between challenging someone to develop and assuming that development must follow her own pattern.

She also recalls going to a manager with a problem and being surprised by his calm response. With more leadership experience, she came to understand the value of that composure. A difficult situation could demand a measured conversation even when she felt strongly about it. Her account includes impatience and inflexibility as things she had to work on, not qualities quietly edited out of a success story.

Asked whether she prefers leading by example or delegation, she refuses to separate them completely. She delegates, but says people also need to see her doing what she expects. The choice depends on the person and situation. That answer brings her account of changing expectations back to everyday management: demonstrating the work can matter as much as allocating it.

Different businesses, different questions

Her conference biographies place her career across healthcare, banking, manufacturing, trade and logistics. They name King Abdulaziz Medical City, Saudi National Bank, Tasnee and Binzagr Company. Economic Times also identifies earlier responsibility as CHRO for the GCC and Levant at Al Safi Danone and work as a senior human-capital consultant at Noble Career Advisory.

Boukhary's own explanation of cross-functional work is less about collecting sectors than learning their problems. In the podcast, she says HR cannot assume it already has the answer for finance, internal audit, sales or marketing. It needs conversations with those teams, an understanding of their difficulties and a check that the proposed response actually addresses them. Delivering a finished programme without that dialogue is precisely the habit she challenges.

Her early freelance journalism, described by Leader's Mic, offers another part of that background. The account connects reporting with learning to investigate, tell stories and ask difficult questions. In her later discussion of HR, storytelling remains important, but now the audience includes managers who need to understand what people data means for a business decision.

The numbers and the person

Boukhary remembers entering HR without expecting numbers to occupy so much of the work. In the JOH Partners conversation, she describes having to become comfortable with analytics, budgets, workforce planning, pay and talent deployment. The decisions could be uncomfortable: who should be paid what, how resources should be allocated and how to explain a change that affected employees. Avoiding the figures was not a workable answer.

She places the human element beside those numbers. The task is to understand the information and explain the decision, rather than treating a calculation as a substitute for responsibility. When younger colleagues ask what their contribution will be once technology supplies the data, her answer concerns interpretation and storytelling. Their work includes making the information understandable and using it to persuade people of a proposed course.

This position also leaves room for mistakes. She does not promise that access to data makes every judgement correct. Individuals interpret information differently, and experience still matters. Her emphasis is on the courage to use the tools, understand the business and take responsibility for the decision. The podcast's broader language about analytics becomes concrete through those familiar HR tasks: planning a workforce, building a budget and explaining why a choice was made.

A candidate wanted to see the office

Her discussion of remote work includes a candidate who had met the team online but wanted to know whether the organisation felt real in person. The candidate asked to visit the office. Boukhary welcomed the request; she says an in-person visit had already been her intended next step. Before accepting, someone could see the workplace, understand how a desk might look and encounter the culture beyond a video call.

That example sits alongside her challenge to colleagues who insisted interviews had to happen face to face. They had interviewed remotely during the pandemic, she reminded them. Continuing to use that option required judging what a situation needed rather than returning automatically to an old habit. A candidate's voluntary visit and a rule that every interview must be in person were different questions.

She argues that HR should help management assess flexible and remote work through skills, productivity and performance management. The office visit illustrates the other side of that argument: technology can make a recruitment conversation possible, while a person may still need to experience the physical setting before making a decision. She describes adapting to the situation, not applying a single remote-work formula to everyone.

Both sides of the conversation

Boukhary is direct about another expectation she has encountered on joining organisations: HR will sign warning letters and dismissal documents. Her answer is that she also wants to be present for promotion letters. In the podcast, she describes partnering with business leaders so that both favourable and difficult outcomes are communicated as shared decisions. HR should not become the visible owner of every unwelcome message while someone else takes sole credit for recognition.

She describes wanting the leader and employee in the conversation with her. A promotion, warning or dismissal should be understood as a considered organisational decision, not as something HR has done separately from the business. The account is about her preferred way of working; it does not establish a universal procedure across every employer in her career.

Credibility, in that explanation, depends on knowing the work and listening carefully to what people are saying. She also distinguishes accountability from having a list of responsibilities. What someone says and does has consequences, including for the person leading the team. That is why transparency matters in her account, whether the message concerns strong performance or a difficult issue that cannot be avoided.

The organisation behind the charging network

Her career includes the Chief People and Culture Officer appointment at EVIQ, the Saudi electric-vehicle infrastructure business. The Humans of Globe feature places her work in recruitment, employee development, communication and workplace culture. It describes the organisation needed behind a charging network, rather than supplying evidence that she personally delivered the infrastructure or its commercial results.

The feature discusses on-the-job training that combines practical skills with an understanding of teamwork and company expectations. It also describes plans to extend opportunities for trainees and develop local talent. They show the people function operating inside a young business whose technical activity required employees to learn together.

One smaller example concerns employees whose children were starting school and colleagues handling relocation. Humans of Globe describes flexibility around those personal circumstances. The point is specific: a workplace arrangement can recognise an employee's life outside the office.

The coach who accepted coffee

Boukhary's own mentorship story begins with asking for something she could not afford. As a junior HR practitioner, she approached the coach who worked with her organisation's CEO and chairman. She told him that she could not pay his fees and that the company was unlikely to place her on his programme. She nevertheless wanted to learn from him. In her recollection, he agreed, asking only for a cup of coffee when they met.

She says the relationship continued, including conversations when they crossed paths at conferences or in airport lounges. She also describes using paid coaches and mentors later. The early story is therefore not an argument that coaching should always be free. It is her example of being clear about what she wanted, recognising someone she trusted and having the courage to ask.

Her advice on choosing a mentor starts with credibility and a relationship in which the person seeking help can believe. A respected professional is not automatically the right mentor for everyone. Fit matters. Boukhary also rejects the expectation of a magic answer: coaching is a journey involving both people. Even as a coach herself, she says she needs coaching. Development is not something she presents as finished once someone reaches an executive role.

Asked what she has taken from the leaders who influenced her, Boukhary does not offer a polished quotation. She talks instead about people who listened, believed in her and gave her room to develop. She describes still thanking them, sometimes publicly and sometimes in private messages. What she remembers is their willingness to work with a young Saudi woman who was vocal, determined and ready to challenge, while helping her turn those qualities into useful work.

Opportunity that extends beyond one appointment

In Economic Times, Boukhary recalls being the first woman hired in a department and leaving several years later with many more women working there. She also describes expanding women's participation when she had authority to create new opportunities.

Her explanation connects advancement with persistence, confidence and learning, alongside difficult experiences. She remembers recognising at a young age that the professional roles she saw women occupying were comparatively narrow. Her ambition was to make a difference for other women as well as for herself. The interview treats access as something that should extend into development and leadership, rather than ending with the first hire.

She also resists a simple division between supportive women and obstructive men, or the reverse. She describes support and bias as behaviours individuals can display. Her account recognises people enabling one another while acknowledging that inequality can remain. Conference biographies identify her participation in the MISK 2030 Leaders programme and the Saudi Leadership Society, placing her development alongside the encouragement she gives others.

A practice of listening and learning

Alongside corporate appointments, her published biographies describe career-development work through MaGlorious. Humans of Globe lists services for organisations, including organisation design, performance management, HR governance and talent acquisition, and for individuals, including career coaching, counselling, mentoring and interview preparation.

Leader's Mic describes her coaching as helping people understand themselves and make informed choices instead of supplying an answer from her own experience. That position fits the distinction she draws between developing an individual and reproducing herself. In the podcast, she encourages learning through short courses, webinars, stretch assignments and observing other people. Formal training is one route, but she places particular value on experience at work.

She describes herself as personally inclined towards long-term planning while having learned to become more flexible professionally. She also prefers meetings that have a human, relatively informal character without losing accountability for what has or has not been done. Her account closes on continuing effort: understand the function, learn the business, build trusted relationships and seek a mentor. The child who asked why an interview question had been asked becomes a leader still arguing for curiosity before an answer.

Her advice in Humans of Globe also includes patience inside an organisation. She recommends that young HR professionals give themselves time to understand its culture, acquire practical experience and build credibility. It is an extension of the learning she describes in her own management: technical confidence needs to meet an understanding of people before it becomes dependable judgement.