Who Is Yasmine Badri? Get to Know the Founder Redefining Experiential Luxury

Some founders chase visibility, while others quietly reshape how an industry operates from the inside. Yasmine Badri belongs to the latter. In a region often defined by scale, speed, and spectacle, she has built her reputation on something far more durable: emotional intelligence, cultural relevance, and experience as a long-term strategy.

A global citizen by background and mindset, Yasmine Badri has studied, worked, and built across multiple markets. While her career has been international, the UAE has been home for over twelve years and remains the place where her vision crystallized. Today, as Founder of BYSELECT, she is widely recognized for pioneering experience-led thinking in the region and helping shape some of its most iconic experiential concepts.

Early Foundations: A Global Outlook Shaped by Strategy and Culture

Yasmine’s early path was defined by movement between cultures and disciplines rather than a single linear trajectory. Educated in marketing management and international business, with both a Bachelor’s degree and an MBA, she developed a strong understanding of how brands, organizations, and audiences function across borders.

She built a career working globally across the public and private sector in luxury, retail, tourism, and hospitality. This exposure shaped her belief that experiences cannot be copied and scaled indiscriminately. They must be culturally fluent, structurally sound, and emotionally grounded to resonate.

Building Experience Before It Became a Buzzword

Long before “experience” became industry shorthand, Yasmine was already advocating for it as a strategic pillar rather than a decorative layer. Her work consistently focused on how brands inhabit space, time, and culture. The objective was always to create moments of presence rather than moments of noise.

Working closely with global luxury groups such as LVMH, Kering, and Richemont, she developed a reputation for translating brand DNA into lived environments. Her approach extended beyond campaign execution and prioritized cultural context, guest journey, and emotional cadence over visual impact alone. This positioned her as a trusted partner for brands navigating the Middle East not as a market, but as a living cultural ecosystem.

One of the most emblematic projects Yasmine Badri led was the Fendi Majlis in Abu Dhabi. More than a seasonal activation, the project reinterpreted the traditional majlis, an essential space of gathering, dialogue, and hospitality during Ramadan, through a contemporary luxury lens. The experience balanced reverence and modernity, embedding the brand into local customs rather than layering branding onto them. It became a reference point for how global maisons can engage with regional traditions authentically, without dilution or appropriation.

This sensitivity to cultural immersion was further demonstrated through Prada Mode Abu Dhabi, the brand’s invitation-only cultural platform. The project transformed the city into a temporary hub for art, architecture, and intellectual exchange, bringing together creatives, thinkers, and tastemakers. Rather than functioning as a conventional brand event, Prada Mode operated as a living cultural salon. Yasmine’s role focused on ensuring coherence between the brand’s global vision and Abu Dhabi’s local cultural fabric, allowing the experience to feel both international and deeply anchored.

She also led The Frankie Shop’s, a brand she lives and breathes, Abu Dhabi activation, marking the brand’s expansion into the Middle East. Known for its minimalist and editorial aesthetic, the challenge lay in translating a digitally native brand into a physical environment that resonated locally while remaining faithful to its identity. The result was a refined and understated experience that emphasized texture, pacing, and atmosphere, demonstrating Yasmine’s ability to reduce spectacle while amplifying relevance.

Across these projects, a consistent philosophy emerged. Experiences were not treated as one-off moments, but as cultural touchpoints. Each environment was designed to encourage presence, interaction, and memory, inviting guests to linger, connect, and return. This body of work, developed well before the launch of BYSELECT, laid the foundation for Yasmine Badri’s reputation as one of the region’s early architects of experience-led luxury.

Founding BYSELECT: From Vision to Execution

BYSELECT was founded to formalize this philosophy. The agency was conceived as a platform to design experiences that people genuinely want to spend time in, not simply attend. Within months of launching, Yasmine Badri and her team were already delivering high-impact projects, quickly establishing credibility through both strategic rigor and executional precision.

The agency places experience at the core of its strategy, treating it as infrastructure rather than embellishment, and designing each project to drive behavior, emotional resonance, and enduring brand memory.

Yasmine Badri’s Leadership Through Growth, Community, and Giving Back

Yasmine’s leadership style is rooted in self-development and community engagement. She has been intentional about avoiding narrow labels. Rather than positioning her work through the lens of women empowerment alone, she focuses on building inclusive communities, creating access, and giving back through mentorship, collaboration, and shared growth.

For her, impact is collective. Strong ecosystems are built when people are empowered to contribute meaningfully and grow together.

Looking Ahead: How Yasmine Badri Is Expanding the Experience Landscape

Looking forward, Yasmine is focused on developing the experiential landscape of the region and extending its influence beyond it. Through a clear growth strategy for BYSELECT, she aims to expand the agency’s footprint internationally while exporting regional expertise and cultural intelligence to new markets.

Her ambition is to help shape a more mature, emotionally intelligent experience economy, one that balances commercial performance with cultural contribution. In an industry that often rewards noise, Yasmine Badri continues to build with intention, clarity, and long-term vision.

The Architects of the New Arab Era: Real power doesn’t always shout. In our new series, Who Is, Mille profiles the Arab visionaries operating at the highest levels of the global industry—the ones writing the checks, building the strategies, and shifting the culture from behind the scenes. From the Maghreb to the Gulf and beyond, these are the leaders defining what modern legacy looks like.

Who Is Yasmine Badri? Get to Know the Founder Redefining Experiential Luxury

Early Foundations: A Global Outlook Shaped by Strategy and Culture

Building Experience Before It Became a Buzzword

Founding BYSELECT: From Vision to Execution

Yasmine Badri’s Leadership Through Growth, Community, and Giving Back

Looking Ahead: How Yasmine Badri Is Expanding the Experience Landscape

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Who Is Yasmine Badri? Get to Know the Founder Redefining Experiential Luxury

Early Foundations: A Global Outlook Shaped by Strategy and Culture

Building Experience Before It Became a Buzzword

Founding BYSELECT: From Vision to Execution

Yasmine Badri’s Leadership Through Growth, Community, and Giving Back

Looking Ahead: How Yasmine Badri Is Expanding the Experience Landscape

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