Sheen Gurrib

Sheen Gurrib is a podcaster, YouTuber, and an entrepreneur.

She has more than 45K subscribers on her eponymous YouTube channel and has 152K followers on Instagram.

Introduction-

Sheen Gurrib was born on 22 May 1993 into a poor family in Mauritius.

She grew up in Mauritius.

Her father had to drop out of university due to financial constraints; he later worked as a road transport inspector in Mauritius.

Sheen’s fifth great-grandfather, Gurrib, boarded a ship in India and arrived in Mauritius in 1856, to work as an indentured laborer; he was just 7 at the time.

He hailed from the Gorah Bazar village in India and didn’t have a first name and upon arriving in Mauritius, he started working as an indentured laborer in a sugarcane field; his quality of life was horrendous.

Her fourth great-grandfather also worked in the fields and was uneducated.

Sheen has an elder sister, Sarah Gurrib; she is self-employed as a Human Rights Consultant and lives in the United States.

Education-

Sheen did her schooling in Mauritius.

Later, she followed her sister’s footsteps and moved to the UK to attend university.

At 18, Sheen left Mauritius and joined University of Oxford in 2011, to study for a four-year combined undergrad and master’s degree in Materials Science.

She graduated in 2015 with 2.1 grade.

After graduating, Sheen decided to do a PhD and applied for both University of Oxford and University of Cambridge; but as she loved her time at Oxford, she decided to pursue her PhD there.

Unfortunately, a month before joining PhD, her funding fell through as the company that was meant to sponsor her PhD went bankrupt and Oxford deferred her entry for the next year.

So, Sheen took a gap year and returned to Mauritius.

Eventually, the Cambridge research team which had offered her a PhD seat beforehand succeeded to secure some funding for her PhD; so, in 2017, she joined University of Cambridge to study for a PhD in Biomedical/Medical Engineering.

In June 2019, Sheen won the Global Shaper award from the World Economic Forum.

She completed her PhD in 2019.

Sheen was the first Mauritian woman to attend both Oxford and Cambridge.

Career; leaving academia-

She founded Project Access for Refugees in January 2018 in London and worked part-time here until May 2020.

Sheen interned as a Healthcare Market Analyst at PharmEnable for a few months in 2020.

While studying PhD, she quickly realized that she couldn’t continue to be in academia as it demanded her to be in lab and do science most of the time; she didn’t like being lonely while working on her project and felt that by doing PhD, she would acquire very niche knowledge which she couldn’t apply on a broad scale.

Also, Sheen didn’t feel creative while doing PhD and found it to be very time-consuming.

In contrast to doing PhD, she wanted to work with a team, in a fast-paced environment, and try many different things; so, she decided to not to make a career in academia.

At the time, Sheen was interested in consulting and when the COVID-19 hit, she noticed many SMEs, startups, charities struggling; so, she along with her friends started ReShape Co., a pro-bono consulting initiative in June 2020 in London; she worked here until September 2021.

She started her podcast, ‘Dream, Girl’, a women empowerment podcast, in November 2020.

This led to Sheen’s first TEDx Talk, ‘Relearning the ABCs of girls’ education’, in 2021.

She started her eponymous YouTube channel on 29 March 2021 and started publishing videos on it.

Sheen worked as a Project Manager for Map the System, Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford from January 2021 to September 2021.

Then, she worked as a Consultant at Oliver Wyman in Dubai from September 2021 to September 2022.

Initially, Sheen was offered the role for Oliver Wyman’s London office, but she learnt about an opening at their Dubai office and moved there as the salary was higher there compared to that of London and also, there were no taxes and Dubai was closer to her home country, Mauritius.

Even though she loved the work, her work-life balance wasn’t great, and she wasn’t able to sustain this in the long run; at the time, her content was picking up and she was getting brand deals and sponsors on her YouTube channel and podcast.

As Sheen has been a creative person, she preferred content creation than working at her job; at the time, her busy job left her with no time and energy for content creation.

She decided to use her business knowledge from being a consultant and a manager and also use her content creation knowledge; so, she joined Khalid Al Ameri Media as a Chief Operations Officer in the United Arab Emirates.

Sheen worked here from September 2022 to February 2023.

Then, she joined Trends in Dubai as a Chief Operations Officer and worked here from February 2023 to January 2024.

Sheen co-founded ProfessionElle Network (PEN) in August 2023 in Dubai and is currently working here.

She is also a Business Coach for Women in Leadership, and an Adjunct Lecturer at Middlesex University in Dubai where she teaches the future of technology.

Also, Sheen is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, United Kingdom.

In 2023, she was ranked as the top 50 most influential women of Dubai.

YouTube-

While living with Ali Abdaal, a popular YouTuber, Sheen decided to increase the engagement and reach of her podcast.

At the time, Ali suggested she start a YouTube channel as video podcasts would have more engagement than audio podcasts and also people can comment under her videos.

So, Sheen started her YouTube channel; she published her first video, ‘Welcome to Dream, Girl!’ on 5 April 2021.

In addition to publishing video podcasts, she also started publishing regular videos on her channel.

As of March 2024, Sheen has 45.1K subscribers on her channel, and 152K followers on Instagram.

She has a website.

Ali Abdaal-

Sheen and Taimur Abdaal, Ali Abdaal’s brother, were studying at the University of Oxford at the same time and Taimur introduced her to Ali.

Then, she and Ali became friends, and she moved in August 2020 and was his roommate before leaving for Dubai.

Personal life-

Sheen hasn’t revealed much of her personal life except in one of her 2021 YouTube videos that she is single.

She lives in Dubai.

Some interesting facts about Sheen Gurrib-

• She is a polyglot as she knows English, French, Urdu, Hindi, Arabic, and Creole (her mother tongue).
• Sheen loves travelling and Japan is her favourite holiday destination.
• Her favourite women are Michelle Obama, Radhi Devlukia, Emma Watson, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Sanna Marin.
• Sheen’s favourite book is ‘Are you too attached?’.
• She loves old Bollywood movies; her favourite movies are ‘Kuch Kuch Hota Hai’ and ‘Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham’.
• Sheen’s favourite foods are biryani and pizza, and favourite desserts are red velvet cake and cupcake.

• Thanks to being from the multicultural Mauritius, she is outgoing.

So, how are you inspired by the success story of Sheen Gurrib?

Share with me in the comment section below.