Leading Through Whiplash: Roar Founder Pallavi Dean On Keeping Her UAE Business Moving Even As Everything Else Shifts

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been trying to run Roar—my Dubai-based architecture and interior design studio—while obsessively refreshing Flightradar24, checking updates from the UAE’s National Emergency Crisis and Disasters Management Authority (NCEMA), and typing "Iran war latest" into Google, as though one more search might finally deliver certainty.

One minute, it was business as usual. The next, site meetings cancelled, an Abu Dhabi car drive was off the calendar, and my phone lighting up with alerts. Literally 10 minutes later, the script flipped. My client in Chicago needed me on site for a handover. A project in Boston wanted a face-to-face kickoff. The question got very simple, very fast: do I stay put, or do I get on a plane? After a debate with the husband (and a couple of worried calls from my parents), I decided to get on a flight. And now, in hindsight, that was the right call.

I’ve been doing this for 23 years, and the Chicago project handover reminded me that the final mile matters. You can spend two years on a project, coordinating, solving problems from a screen, arguing over details on calls, but when the space is finally real, that last stretch is everything. Snagging, artwork placement, walking the site, adjusting what looked perfect on paper but feels off in person. That is the actual work—and not an optional extra—for a designer.

Boston mattered for a different reason. In moments like this, showing up says something. We are a Dubai-based firm working internationally. I didn't want clients wondering whether hiring a studio from this region had suddenly become a risk. Being in a room physically still counts. The COVID-19 crisis might have proved video conferencing tools like Zoom can keep things moving, but it also proved that  it cannot replace human connection.

In the middle of all this, I had a completely random coffee-shop conversation that turned into a possible pitch in Lisbon, which I then pulled together over the Eid break. Annoyingly, this is how business development actually works. You can spend weeks building a strategy deck, but then, one half-caffeinated, fully jetlagged chat does more than 20 well-crafted emails. The world still runs on chemistry and connection.

A lot of people keep comparing this moment we’re facing in the UAE and the wider region to that during the COVID-19 crisis. And while I understand the instinct, I don't think it's the same. The coronavirus pandemic was collective; everyone was in it together, and everyone was having the same bad dream. What we are going through now though feels uneven. But even if it can be described as a regional geopolitical issue, the sharp uptick in global oil prices proves that what looked like someone else's problem can suddenly also feel very much like yours.

Inside the Roar studio, though, the real challenge isn't geopolitics; it's managing people. Some of my team said that they weren't comfortable travelling or going to sites in the UAE. I understand that—I’m a human before I'm a business owner. Fear is real—but so is payroll. At the end of the day, post-contract work pays salaries. For context, this is the delivery phase after a design is approved and the site is live, consisting of inspections, contractor coordination, shop drawing reviews, snagging, final styling, authority sign-offs, and fixing what got built wrong. We have 30 projects being delivered right now, and site visits, handovers, contractor reviews, these aren't nice-to-haves; they're billable, and they keep projects moving. So, it isn't reasonable for the entire workload to fall on me and one other person, while everyone else stays home on full pay. That is a very skewed definition of empathy, as it’s only one-way.

I ended up having to say the uncomfortable thing out loud: if anyone in the team genuinely didn’t feel safe doing the travel or site component of your role, then annual leave or unpaid leave provisions might have to come into the conversation. That didn't land well with everyone. But leadership isn't all strategy planning meetings and podcast sound bites. Sometimes, it's just one difficult conversation after another, because the business cannot run on good vibes. April is usually salary review season for us. Normally, that means pay rises. This year, maybe not. We've already had to signal that, and unsurprisingly, it hasn't gone down well.

I get it. Nobody wants to hear that a raise might be delayed, especially when they've worked hard, and everything costs more. But I've been here before. During the COVID-19 crisis, we made cuts. But by the end of that year, we'd had a phenomenal run, and I paid every dirham back. The people who stayed know I don't make these calls lightly, and when things improve, we're fair about it. But when things are volatile, you make decisions in real time. Now, I don’t expect anyone to work the way I do—of course not, it isn’t their company. They’re not carrying the same risk, and they don’t benefit from the same upside. But people do need to work as hard as the role they're paid to do. That's not me being harsh. That's just the employment contract.

I know myself well enough to know what uncertainty does to me. I don't freeze. I go into overdrive, hyper-operational, making lists, scenario planning, trying to get every duck in a row. Some of that is genuinely useful. Some of it is exhausting, and it spills into family life and into my ability to be a normal human being for five minutes. Add in homeschooling two teenage boys who will game between classes if given half the chance. What a beautiful little life cocktail.

Meanwhile, clients are not waiting for our emotional processing to finish. Projects are live and opening dates are real. A hotel cannot half-open. A handover cannot happen in theory. Final inspections, artwork placement, closeout, all of that still has to happen. Design is not open-heart surgery, obviously. But it has commercial consequences. Delays cost money.

That's the odd thing about interior design in moments like this. It's both a luxury and a serious commercial function. Nobody is pretending that luxury interiors are an essential service. But they are tied to revenue, timelines, leasing, branding, guest experience. So, yes, our industry is vulnerable. But trivial? Not quite.

My first instinct was that if local work slowed, our international portfolio would buffer us. Around 40 per cent of our projects are outside the UAE. That assumption lasted about five minutes. When oil moves and confidence drops, clients everywhere start looking at budgets differently, Bali, Boston, Mumbai—it doesn't really matter. In our world, luxury design is often the first thing people decide they can postpone.

And that's the unsettling part. One minute, I'm on a plane, and everything feels weirdly normal. The next, I open my inbox, and a project is on hold. To be fair, projects go on hold all the time—funding shifts, clients go quiet, etc. But in a volatile moment, every setback jolts the nervous system.

This is what this period actually feels like. One word: whiplash. Business as usual, then absolutely not. One confident decision followed immediately by second-guessing. You're trying to reassure your team, steady your clients, protect cash flow, and stay vaguely sane, all while the news cycle behaves like Dubai weather in March. Rain one minute; blue skies the next.

Still, work goes on. Economies don't move forward by everyone freezing at once. Someone has to get on the plane, walk the site, make the awkward call, hold the line on salaries, calm the client down, and keep the whole machine moving.

It may not be glamorous. But it is as real as it gets.

About The Author

Pallavi Dean (pictured in the lead image) is the founder and Creative Director of Roar, an award-winning architecture and interior design studio based in Dubai, UAE.