We often find it hard to reconcile our passions with a traditionally successful career trajectory. But that’s not the case for Choucri Asmar, Chief Client Officer at AXA OneHealth. Although he holds a leading position at the insurance multinational, he is currently synonymous with the Heliopolis Heritage Initiative; the headline-making movement striving to preserve the quality of life in Heliopolis. As its president, Asmar works tirelessly with a team of volunteers to ensure that Heliopolis remains the beautiful, greenery-filled, and culturally diverse area that it is. And they’ve been quite successful so far!
“We want Heliopolis to be the way it was when we were growing up, I used to move around using the metro and bikes. To this day I only travel around with my bike in Heliopolis, and we want to bring that back,” he passionately told us during what was a heart-warming conversation about his career journey and the initiative’s accomplishments.
Asmar started his career in FMCGs and had accumulated 15 years of experience in the sector. He then started debating himself on whether he should switch to specializing in waste management or healthcare. “I was thinking that I want to have an impact on people’s lives,” he said. And then like a sign from above, he got the call to join AXA in its nascent phase in Egypt, “I was one of the first four employees there. AXA Egypt’s CEO had just returned from Paris and it was clear that they wanted to do something different that will change the face of healthcare access in Egypt.”
What does that have to do with his volunteer work on Heliopolis? We found out…
Joining AXA at the Very Beginning
AXA Group, being one of the biggest insurance companies in the world, wanted to invest in emerging markets. It was clear they wanted to start by investing in and enhancing the quality of healthcare services in Egypt. Asmar wanted to be a part of that. During his time there, AXA quickly established itself as a gamechanger in the country’s healthcare sector.
(via Linesmag)
Despite the fact that Asmar was making such a massive impact in the healthcare sector, he still felt connected to the grassroots efforts he was so passionate about on the local level in Heliopolis. He wanted to make a difference in his community on the ground.
And it was his journey at AXA that reignited in him his passion for serving others.
Founding the Heliopolis Heritage Initiative
So he got a few friends on board and together they decided to launch the Heliopolis Heritage Initiative to restore Heliopolis to its former glory. “We are very proud of some really amazing things that we accomplished, such as lobbying for the creation of a museum in Baron Palace, and refurbishing it, and protecting the greenery in Maryland in particular. But of course, we have had some failures. We lost 96 feddan of greenery for the bridges that were built last year in Nozha and Masr el Gedida and we are still trying to make up for that until now by campaigning for more trees to be planted,” he added.
“Our mission is to keep up the quality of life in Heliopolis and to protect it from violations as we renew and reuse its rich heritage.” And they are not giving up as we continue to see how urban development is unfolding in Heliopolis.
(via Nora Youssef)
Making Real, Sustainable Change: How Work and Volunteering Can Go Together
“I am very proud to be working in AXA because in multiple locations around the world, many of their office buildings are old and heritage ones that they refurbish themselves,” shared Asmar. So, as luck would have it, AXA’s values aligned with his own, and their adaptive reuse of heritage buildings were transferred to Egypt’s Heliopolis in their AXA OneHealth branch. “We picked a heritage building in Korba that was built in 1924, which we refurbished.
Similarly, the Heliopolis Heritage Initiative is working on the reuse and refurbishing of heritage buildings. They want to prove that it’s possible to reinvest in these buildings rather than letting them fade away. And this way they can also have an economic value.”
When we asked Asmar about what drove him to accomplish what he did through the Heliopolis Heritage Foundation besides his passion for architecture and Heliopolis, he referred to many skills he acquired and sharpened at his day job. These included project management, interpersonal and communication skills, time management, and networking. But the quality he’s most indebted to is perseverance.
It is inspiring to see someone with such an accomplished career, also volunteer to better his local community. “One of our pillars at Heliopolis Heritage Initiative is to make people proud of its beauty and history,” Asmar put it concisely. Imagine the change we could see in all areas of Cairo if we managed to organize in the same way to better the urban development and infrastructure of its communities (looking at you Zamalek) so it serves the people living in it.
Check out the Heliopolis Heritage Initiative’s Facebook page and follow them here!
What would you use your time outside the workday to accomplish?
