• Alba Arjona, Political and Administration Sciences alumna, Senior Talent Acquisition Executive at Vezeeta.com (Cairo, Egypt)

Alba Arjona Castillo earned her bachelor’s degree in Political and Administration Sciences in 2016; since 2017, she has lived in Cairo (Egypt). During her time at UPF, she did an Erasmus exchange at Vrije Universiteit in Brussels and was a member of AIESEC, which allowed her to participate in different work experiences, first in Madrid and then in the Egyptian capital. In Cairo, she had the opportunity to live for a year with 22 other young people from seven different countries, ‘helping young Egyptians leave their comfort zone and develop different skills, mostly related to leadership’, she explains.

When she finished her AIESEC placement in Egypt, she was contacted by her current company, Vezeeta.com, which aims to develop technological solutions for problems facing people in the region, such as finding a good doctor or a telemedicine or pharmacy home-delivery service. ‘I loved the challenge and, three years on, I’m still here’, she says. At Vezeeta.com, Alba works in the human resources department, where she is responsible for recruiting talent for the company’s offices in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Kenya and Egypt. She scouts for talent to fill jobs in fields ranging from software engineering and sales to digital marketing, human resources or finance.

She looks back on her time at UPF fondly (‘I think those were some of the best years of my life. I was very lucky!’) and highlights the time she spent with her friends. ‘In my first few weeks at UPF, eight years ago now, I met seven friends who today I could not live without.’ In addition to her fond memories, her time at the university and training as a political scientist have been very useful to her development in the health sector. ‘My knowledge of social policy and democracy has really helped me see things and approach my day-to-day work with greater perspective and understanding. It has also taught me how to discuss things and communicate’, she says. 

“Healthcare in Egypt is terrible. Basically, you only have it if you can afford it.”

Speaking about her plans for the future, Alba is adamant: ‘I want to go back to Catalonia. The truth is, I really like Egypt and the people her are very welcoming, but there are a lot of things that make me see that this is not the country where I want to spend the rest of my life.’ For example, she does not like the infrastructure, an issue that greatly impacts her everyday life. ‘The country is built for cars, not people. It’s impossible to go for an afternoon walk on the pavement because most places do not have any and, when they do, it’s full of parked cars’, she complains.

She would like to come back, and she would love to continue working in the world of human resources: if possible, in the field of technology, preferably related to development or healthcare. Comparing the Catalan and Egyptian healthcare systems, she explains that there is a yawning gap between the two countries: ‘Healthcare in Egypt is terrible. Basically, you only have it if you can afford it.’ She adds, ‘Honestly, an experience in this type of Middle Eastern country teaches you a lot, especially to value the healthcare system we have at home. It obviously needs improvement, but we don’t realize how lucky we are to have been born in Catalonia.’

Photo gallery

Alba Arjona in her graduation and in various situations at UPF, and in different scenarios in Egypt