DUBAI — She first came to the UAE as a tourist. And she wasn’t looking for a job. She had been invited by a friend to spend a few days here. Little did the Filipina know that these “few days” will ultimately round off to a full 20 years in the UAE.

Jijie ZablanJijie Zablan, an industrial engineering graduate, had been to countries like the US before coming to the UAE. But life in Dubai charmed the Filipina so much that she decided to stay back.

“Back then there was talk of free zones, large airports and the like,” she recollects. “Large tracts of land in Dubai and Sharjah were barren,” she remembers.

Zablan, who is now the Systems and Training Director of the Dubai-based professional training company Great Minds Network, also recalls, with amusement, how she was once declined the job of a secretary because she was “over-qualified”, considering her engineering background.

“No one believed I am an engineer. That’s probably because I was too young then. So I started as a secretary for a structural engineering company,” she informs.

As a secretary, she tried to share her knowledge of computers with anyone interested to learn. “I didn’t know that this is was what I really wanted to do,” she adds.

Soon an opportunity came her way to prove her engineering skills. “While my boss was away on an overseas business assignment, a manager wanted a calculation report, which I volunteered to prepare. After that, they offered me a job in the Engineering department,” she recalls.

That stint, however, was not to last long, as she started longing for an IT-related job. When she left this company, she took up the job of a sales executive with a Sharjah-based computer company. Here she came up with a winner of a marketing strategy. She offered to provide computer training to companies that order to purchase computers from them. The strategy became a big hit. And Zablan, a marketing “star”.
What is her recipe for success? “First and foremost, you must have a clear goal in life,” she replies.

An entrepreneur herself, Zablan founded the Zablan Information Systems back in the early 2000. The company now provides IT training to UAE companies. Her company was part of the initial IT training organised by Etisalat during the Dubai Shopping Festival in 2000, where 100 people were simultaneously trained on browsing the Internet and using e-mail.

As for her passion for community work, Zablan has set up the Filipino Computer Club in the UAE, which provides free computer training to Filipinos from various walks of life.

She has also been involved in the Emiratisation programme. “As a training provider, I always make it a point to take any opportunity where I can train UAE nationals. I see this as a way of giving back something to this country that has given me so much,” she says.