Kareem Makhlouf is Co-Founder and Chief of Staff at the New Lines Institute in Washington DC. He is also an adjunct professor of Education in the Middle East and North Africa at the George Washington University. Kareem has over 25 years of experience in international development and public administration with multilateral development agencies and organisations including the World Bank Group and the European Commission.
We’ve worked with Kareem for over seven years, on everything from New Lines’ brand strategy, strategy for various New Lines-affiliated institutes and programmes, design of an awards programme, visual identities (several), websites (more than several), annual reports, and more.
Tom: How would you characterise our working relationship?
Kareem: There’s one underlying current of respect and empathy that runs through everything. Professionalism is expected in any working relationship, and of course that is there. What I’m talking about is something in addition: a level of empathy and connection that comes through every time. Not just from Tom and Natallia, but everyone. There’s a demeanour that’s welcoming and encouraging, where other companies show the professional cold face and respond with calculated answers; it’s almost as though there’s a calculation in their mind about how to monetise this request.
With Cast from Clay, you think with us through things, and then we together land on what makes sense to do next. Then we talk about how to do it, how much it costs, the different options. I’ve never felt I need to have my guard up because you might monetise a request when it’s not really something we necessarily need.
Tom: Why do you have that sense?
Kareem: You’ve always been open to having a discussion about, or pushing back on, things we think we need—and you say “maybe not this, but that”, and the thing you propose is sometimes less costly for us.
You’ve built trust because you’ve been honest about what you think makes sense. Sometimes what we agree to do is less profitable for you, but better for us. You do this every time. It’s not just you. The entire team does that.
Tom: What would you tell someone thinking about hiring us?
Kareem: I would tell anyone thinking about working with Cast from Clay to hire them for the thinking process. For the process of figuring out strategically what it is that you need as an organisation, because sometimes organisations think they know what they need, but often they don’t, or they don’t fully know.
Cast from Clay are the type of partner who will help you figure that out. Is this truly what you need? Let’s take a step back. Instead of just taking your scope-of-work document or contract and executing it–which they can do–they take a step back and think with the client about whether this is the right thing. And if it is, what’s the best way to do it.
Perhaps the most important value-add is this ability to challenge a client’s ideas or notions of what they need, and help them hone in on what they truly need.
Tom: What’s the best thing we’ve done together?
Kareem: I love the way the Principled Leadership Award was conceptualised and designed—the idea and the way it was done. I love the work you’ve done for the Ibn Khaldun Institute. The design is excellent. The concept, how your team translated it into the tree and the colour scheme, the entire thinking process around it, how you were involved with us from the start. That’s how you work: thinking with us about different approaches, helping us figure out what we need to do.
We’ve had a lot of compliments about the annual report, particularly the design and how it’s presented. Folks who look at our website tell us how professional it looks, and the brand identity really stands out and differentiates us.
Tom: How do you find the day-to-day process of working with us?
Kareem: We’re comfortable knowing that if we drop the ball, you won’t. We know the direction, the steps, who’s doing what, the key milestones. If we get busy, you keep us on track—emails saying, “Okay, this is missing, where are we on this?” Good project management. Not a tool, an approach.
Tom: Where could we be better?
Kareem: Things sometimes took longer than originally anticipated. As your client base grew, we could tell you were busy with other things, and it sometimes meant being more intentional about scheduling and dedicating time, because we might lose your developers to another client. You were always upfront about it. It wasn’t a huge deal, but it meant things we wanted done sooner had to take a bit more time.
Tom: Has the work helped you reach the audiences you want to reach?
Kareem: Our President talks a lot about how he’s proud of how the brand has evolved. He told me last week that in the past, we used to be willing to do a lot of things with different organisations because we weren’t known. Now that we have a well-established brand, we can afford to say no. We can afford to be selective.
A lot of that is thanks to Cast from Clay, because they helped us with our brand strategy, our brand identity, and all of that. We have something to be really proud of.
If you want to read another review, the next is with Alison Griffin, Head of Mission at Save the Children. If you would like to have an initial conversation with Tom, our CEO, to discuss a potential engagement, you can book a 15 minute call.