About Me
I am an innovation strategist. I am obsessed with the design process: inspiration, ideation, interpretation, napkin sketching, building, evaluation, prototyping, and implementation.
​
I’m motivated by creating a positive impact and bringing people together to cause a positive change. I am curious, collaborative, and observant. Throughout my work, I use a design system thinking approach that surrounds human-centered design and experimentation.
​
​
Skills
Design Strategy Design Research Concept Development System Mapping Creative Direction Content Strategy Product Design Branding Design Thinking Curation Creative Initiatives Visual Design Brand Development
Work Experience
Clients & Collaborations
Founder at The Daily Fashion Arabia
The Daily Fashion Arabia (DFA) is an American platform focusing on fashion, culture, and art in the Middle East and North Africa.
​
Rania Abdalla founded DFA in 2022 while pursuing her master's from Parsons School of Design in New York City. As an American with a Middle Eastern heritage, Rania realized there had been no support for the fashion and jewelry industry in the Middle East and North Africa.
To foster inclusivity and support women, DFA is an advocate seeking social justice and celebrating women and creatives in the MENA region. The initiative aims to provide an immersive, empowering, and authentic cultural experience.
Daily Fashion Arabia aims to update you on the hottest trends, and coveted sneak peeks into up-and-coming MENA brands. The website offers articles, curated styles, events, and exciting features. And Rania's here to guide you through various styles with stories, tips, and insights.
Junior Strategist at ADVOC8
ADVOC8 is an experiential communications agency. It works with corporate brands, nonprofits, and associations to tell their stories by transforming existing mediums into divergent experiences that build lasting connections. It uses the power of strategy-based experiential storytelling to partner with brands boldly seeking to change perceptions, actions, and beliefs.
During the internship, Rania researched various topics and audiences, created personas, and conducted surveys and journey maps. Through her journey at Advoc8, she had to identify all customer touchpoints, identify clients' KPIs, and build a strategic toolkit for them.
Rania converted research to identify compelling stories and develop written content, explored research questions with quantitative data and qualitative data, provided basic copywriting and copyediting support for internal newsletter and clients success stories, three one-pagers, and two case studies, and prepped for and contributed to strategy brainstorming sessions for two clients.
Rania worked for an agency called 1021 Creative, supporting YouTube’s Culture and Trends team. She spent her days attempting to understand how video is affecting and reflecting culture at large at YouTube's Culture & Trends. Rania used extensive pop culture and trending video knowledge to understand YouTube content trends.
Rania Worked with YouTube's Culture and Trends team on building intelligence for business use through delivering expert-level research every week (40+ research documents so far); using a combination of data analysis (SQL), pattern recognition, and data storytelling.
She helped with Marketing, Brand, and PR teams across several regions to inform company-wide Marketing and Brand campaigns and supported B2B asks. She trained storytellers on research, data analysis, and crafting an engaging narrative starting with data.
Since Rania is a native Arabic speaker, she supported linguistics research through her knowledge of Middle Eastern & North African different accents. Also, Rania provided market-specific research, editorial, and storytelling services in The US and Middle Eastern/North African markets for YouTube.
Rania conducted and created assets for regular presentations on YouTube trends for internal and external stakeholders, monitored the state of video culture across YouTube and competitive platforms, and delivered expert data-driven insights on YouTube-specific trends on a weekly basis for multiple business use cases.
​Creative Strategist @YouTube's Culture & Trends
Research Assistant
Supervised bilingual platform, Fikra Forum, featuring political, economic, and social analysis on Middle Eastern affairs.
Education
Parsons School of Design
Master of Science: Strategic Design and Management with minors in Impact Entrepreneurship and Civic Service Design.
The George Washington University
Bachelor's Degree: Political Science. Minor: Journalism and Mass Communication.
Interests
Fashion, Design Thinking, Service Design, Prototyping, Visual Thinking, Innovation, Sustainability, Artificial Intelligence, Marketing, Branding, Media Trends
Strategic Design andManagement Courses:
Master of Science - MS
Field of Study: Strategic Design and Management
Dates attended
GPA: 3.89
Courses:
-
Integrative Studio 2
-
New Design Firms
-
Regulatory and Ethical Contexts
-
Independent Project: Design Research
-
Design Innovation and Leadership
-
Integrative Studio 1- Key Partner: Hannaford. (The Firm's Challenge: How might storytelling strategies and a change in the store’s layout provide opportunities for customers to support and scale local food webs and encourage healthy, convenient food choices?)
-
Strategic Design and Management in New Economies
-
Sustainable Business Models
-
Managing Creative Projects and Teams
Minor: Impact Entrepreneurship
Courses:
-
Intro to Social Impact Entrepreneurship
-
Market Research for Media Managers
-
Entrepreneurship in Media
-
Media Management and Leadership
​
Minor: Civic Service Design
Courses:​
-
Public Collaborative Services
-
Data As Material
