‘Giving makes me happy, and makes me feel the importance of my existence’. In these words, Emirati engineer Noura Al Naqbi sums up her continuous efforts to improve, innovate, as well as facilitate the services she provides to consumers through her work at Dubai Electricity and Water Authority ‘DEWA’.
 
Speaking to Dubai Post, Al Naqbi says that ‘the happiness of the customers must go along with other pillars of work, like innovation and creativity. Through my work here, I found out that DEWA’s achievements have always improved people's lives’.
 
In school, Al Naqbi excelled in the fields of mathematics and physics. Her family encouraged her to study electrical engineering at the American University in Sharjah, and she welcomed the idea. ‘Electrical engineering is a tough and challenging major, however, I did very well and graduated with honor,’ she explained.
 
After graduation, Al Naqbi joined DEWA as an engineer in the power stations. In 2010, one of her ideas led her to win the ‘Creative Employee Award’ from the Dubai Government Excellence Awards Programme. ‘This award was an incentive for me to work harder and seek more challenges’.
 
Al Naqbi started a new phase in her career in the renewable energy sector, and was part of the founding team of solar energy in Dubai, including the Shams Dubai initiative.
 
‘Over time, the sector grew and the projects developed, and I became also part of the Shams Dubai project, which allows consumers to install solar panels in their properties, and helped them change from electricity consumers, to electricity generators’.