The Book

The CEO’s Journey is an independent business biography celebrating the life and many achievements of the late Rami Makhzoumi, former President and CEO of Future Pipe Industries. Rami died suddenly at the age of 33 on 23 April 2011. The 292-page book took a year to research and write, and includes interviews with over 70 family members, friends, colleagues, suppliers and customers who knew Rami well.
The book, by business school professor Steven Sonsino and former Financial Times journalist Jacqueline Moore, was launched at the American University of Beirut on 31 October 2012, the day which would have been Rami’s 35th birthday. “Rami epitomised the hopes and achievements of a generation of young entrepreneurs building a new Middle East,” says Dr Nasser Saidi, formerly Chief Economist at the Dubai International Financial Centre and an independent non-executive director of Future Pipe Industries.
Another Future non-executive, Anthony Dowd, Chief of Staff for the Office of Paul Volcker former Chairman of the US President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, adds, “From the factory floor, to the executives reporting to him, to the other board members… Rami was just a unique guy that earned great respect and a leadership role at such a young age.”
The CEO’s Journey charts Rami Makhzoumi’s life from his birth in Riyadh, in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, to the week of his death when he received the Masterclass CEO of the Year award in Dubai in April 2011. It also covers the first full year after his death and the beginnings of a number of legacy projects established in his name. There is a foreword in the book from Rami’s father, Fouad Makhzoumi, CEO and chairman of Future Group and Future Pipe Industries Group, Founder of the Makhzoumi Foundation and Founder and President of the National Dialogue Party, Lebanon. And also from his mother May Makhzoumi, Chair of the Makhzoumi Foundation.
In his afterword to the book, Dr Assem Safieddine, Interim Chair of the Rami Fouad Makhzoumi Chair in Corporate Governance at the AUB, says, “You don’t need to have met or have known Rami for him to become an inspiration. Listening to his parents, people who have known him or worked with him talk so passionately about his vision and reading about his multi-front achievements over a very short life are enough to stimulate your urge to carry on his legacy and spread out its reach.”