The Long Way Round: Lina Kassem, Managing Director

People like a tidy career story: a straight line from a clear plan to a corner office. Mine was not that. Mine was the long way round, through five cities, two sides of the table, a small business of my own, and one decision that, on paper, looked like a mistake. Looking back now as Managing Director of PiWheel, I can see that every detour was quietly preparing me for where I would land.

Starting on the agency side

I began my career at OMD as a media planner. It was the best possible training ground, because agency life teaches you to think across many brands, many budgets, and many problems at once. You learn fast, you learn under pressure, and you learn that the work is never really about the media plan. It is about the business behind it.

From there, I moved client side, to Unilever as a media manager. That move changed everything for me. On the agency side, you advise; on the client side, you own the outcome. Suddenly, the decisions were mine to live with, and that shift in accountability reshaped how I thought about every brief. It is still the piece of advice I give most often: if you want to understand the business, sit on the side that carries the risk.

London, and the global view

The next turning point was geography. I moved to Unilever in London, stepping into a global team. Working at that scale was a game-changer. The problems were bigger, the perspectives were wider, and the standard was higher. You cannot fake your way through a global team, so it forced me to sharpen everything: how I thought, how I argued, how I built things that had to work across very different markets.

I then joined L’Oréal as digital manager for the Consumer Products Division, with ecommerce sitting right at the heart of the role. L’Oréal is where my knowledge came together across the full picture, from brand and content to media and commerce. If London taught me to think at scale, L’Oréal taught me how all the pieces actually connect.

The detours that mattered

Alongside the corporate roles, I took detours that turned out to be just as formative. I did stints freelancing in content creation, and I ran a small business of my own. That entrepreneurial chapter gave me something no job title could: the instinct to build, to solve a problem end to end, and to be comfortable with the discomfort that comes with ownership.

The hardest lesson came when I left a job without another one lined up. It was not the safe choice, and it was not comfortable, but it taught me resilience in a way nothing else could have. You find out what you are made of when there is no safety net, and you carry that with you afterwards.

Joining PiWheel, by accident

Here is the part that still makes me smile. I joined PiWheel almost by mistake, six years ago, right at the start of the pandemic. My plans had shifted, like everyone’s did, and I found myself without a role. Maher suggested I take a look at PiWheel. I did, and six years later I am still here, now leading it.

I have come to believe that the accidental doors are sometimes the right ones. Everything before PiWheel — the agency rigour, the client accountability, the global exposure, the entrepreneurial itch, the resilience I had been forced to learn — all of it turned out to be exactly what this place needed. The long way round was not wasted. It was the whole point.

What I am proudest of

If you ask me what I am most proud of, it is not a single campaign or a number on a slide. It is the team I have built. Products and strategies matter, but teams are what endure, and watching people grow into work they did not know they could do is the part of this job that never gets old.

What drives me, underneath all of it, is building. I am happiest when there is a real problem to solve and something to create on the other side of it. That instinct is the through-line from the small business I once ran to the products we build at PiWheel today.

Outside the work

Away from the desk, I make art collages. I think it is the same instinct as the rest of my career, taking pieces that do not obviously belong together and finding the composition that makes them work. Maybe that is the real theme of my story: five cities, two sides of the table, a few brave detours, and one happy accident — all arranged into something that, in hindsight, makes complete sense.

The long way round, it turns out, was the right way for me.