Urban development across the Middle East and Africa is increasingly defined by scale, complexity, and long-term ambition. Behind many of the region’s most significant masterplans and mega-scale developments are strategic decisions that balance market demand, financial viability, and the realities of how cities function over time. As Executive Director and Head of Strategic Consulting for MEA at JLL, Mireille Azzam Vidjen operates at this critical intersection, advising governments, developers, and planning authorities on how to translate vision into commercially and socially sustainable urban environments.
Mireille Azzam Vidjen is one such distinguished leader, highly regarded for her deep market knowledge and strategic acumen. With 20+ years of consulting experience, she leads a team of over 140 professionals, specializing in real estate programs that align with market demands and drive commercial success. Be it real estate supply and demand modeling, master planning support, advanced financial modeling, or portfolio advisory, Mireille’s strategic, market-aligned advice has been driving sustainable outcomes for clients and supporting planned urban frameworks across the region.
A Journey Built on Excellence and Longevity
Mireille currently serves as the Executive Director and Head of Strategic Consulting for the Middle East and Africa at JLL. Her professional journey reflects deep-rooted expertise within the real estate sector. She began her career at Ernst & Young, where she spent three and a half years establishing a strong foundation in professional services. This early experience equipped her with the analytical rigour required for the consulting world.
For the past 19 years, Mireille’s professional home has been JLL, where she has grown alongside the organization through significant transformations in the MEA region. Having overseen projects spanning a billion square meters of land while at JLL, Mireille has navigated multiple real estate cycles and spearheaded iconic giga and mega-scale projects in the UAE, KSA, and the wider region.
Mireille’s approach to real estate consulting is grounded in understanding how urban environments impact daily life. It is a city’s urban planning framework that determines whether a person walks to work, whether they exercise in the morning, and even the number of steps they take each day. She believes that well-designed communities contribute to longevity and overall well-being. These insights form the cornerstone of her team’s advisory work, ensuring that real estate projects foster thriving communities.
Scaling and Leading High-Performance Teams
When Mireille assumed leadership of the consulting team in 2017, JLL was witnessing substantial growth, expanding from 25 to over 140 professionals across MEA. This expansion involved strategic change management and organizational design, with Mireille ensuring every new team member was aligned with JLL’s high-quality standards. While in a large team, communication can often slow down, Mireille also prioritizes efficient information flow and consistent, high-quality advice for all clients.
Leveraging JLL’s Powerful Ecosystem
A key differentiator in Mireille’s consulting approach is her access to a vast global platform. JLL is not just a consulting firm; it is a full-service real estate powerhouse. Mireille leverages downstream teams across the entire real estate lifecycle. Her consulting teams get practical insights from teams specializing in leasing, valuations, and transactions. They hear directly from project managers, construction experts, and cost managers. This means their advice is not just theoretical. It is grounded in practical market realities, making these highly implementable and valuable to clients.
This direct connection between feasibility studies and real-world outcomes motivates the team, empowering them to contribute directly to client success and driving their excellence through large-scale impact.
Navigating Market Volatility with Empathy
Operating in the dynamic MEA regions, Mireille prepares her team to help clients with future-proof projects against economic shifts and international volatility. This involves continuous evolution of methodologies and calls for maintaining trust and engagement among top talent. During periods of change, her empathetic leadership style prioritizes motivation and support, as she believes that when people feel valued, they become partners in change. This ensures the team actively participates in adapting to market demands.
Mireille balances strategic vision with a people-first approach. Her philosophy is simple: a happy team leads to happy clients. She believes that people are the most important asset as they build relationships and trust, driving success.
While focused on delivering strategic objectives, Mireille actively supports her team members, ensuring clear career progression and professional development opportunities. She leverages JLL’s robust global culture to foster stability and provide consistent support, particularly during intense project phases, where shared values reinforce a sense of familiarity. Mireille also prioritizes work-life balance and cultivates a collegial environment through organized team events and activities.
Building Diverse and Empowered Teams
Mireille’s strategy for team building begins with recruiting top-tier professionals, with trust and recognition being the key tools to retain talent. JLL’s positive and inclusive culture further creates a conducive environment for teams to thrive. Employees receive extensive on-the-job training while academic partnerships support their higher education.
Mireille also champions global mobility through exchange programs across JLL’s international offices, broadening professional horizons and facilitating knowledge transfer. Flexible work arrangements are offered to support varying life circumstances, promoting long-term career paths within the organization. This focus on job security and stability creates a solid foundation for a high-performing team.
Strategic Integrity in Decision-Making
Leadership often necessitates difficult decisions, particularly in volatile economies. Scaling a team from 25 to 140 professionals called for making complex choices in resource optimization and market positioning. Mireille’s decisions were guided by a dual imperative: safeguard clients’ strategic interests and protect the team’s professional trajectory.
Sometimes, this means giving clients pragmatic but challenging advice, including recommending phasing or deferring projects when market conditions are unfavourable, and prioritizing long-term client value over short-term gains. Mireille applies similar rigor to project allocation and resource deployment to sustain team morale and ensure consistent value delivery for clients.
Mentoring the Next Generation of Visionaries
Mireille is dedicated to mentoring young professionals and instilling in them that real estate is about building communities, not a mere transaction. She encourages combining analytical skills with an understanding of a project’s human impact on daily lives and well-being.
She advocates for personal brand cultivation and intellectual agility as essential skills for adapting to constant change, acknowledging AI’s role as a tool rather than a replacement for human expertise. She believes AI will change how consultants work rather than reducing their value. Clients will still need human expertise for reliable industry insights. Mireille encourages emerging professionals to seek out diverse perspectives from different markets, as exceptional leadership comes from collective wisdom, not just individual brilliance.
Staying Grounded in a Fast-Paced World
Despite her senior position, Mireille maintains a grounded leadership approach, attributing the success of JLL Consulting to collective team effort. She credits her organization for providing the foundation and growth to make success possible. She views her role as establishing direction, empowering capable individuals and leading from the front. Mireille is acutely aware that her achievements would not exist without her extraordinary team. This perspective provides clarity and balance, especially during tough times.
Her success, she says, is measured by the collective accomplishments of her team rather than her own individual wins. When pressures intensify, she finds resilience in the support of her colleagues and from the knowledge that she is part of a global ecosystem that invests in its people. This strong foundation lends both practical support and emotional stability, and for Mireille, personal fulfillment is all about witnessing her team members’ success and growth.
A Legacy of Thriving Communities
Mireille’s work is focused on shaping the long-term direction of organizations and communities. Sustainability and inclusiveness are integrated into her advisory practices. When she helps a client decide what to build and at what price, she always considers the needs of the community. Environmental impact and accessibility influence every market analysis and development recommendation. Leveraging JLL’s sustainability expertise, she helps clients minimize environmental footprints, ensuring developments contribute positively to both business and societal goals.
Looking ahead, Mireille hopes to leave a lasting legacy in the built environment, calling on her team to always remember their responsibility in shaping communities. The developments they advise on today will influence how people live for decades to come, and she believes, by providing practical and implementable advice, JLL creates real value for society. Her ultimate goal, she says, is to leave a legacy of thriving communities across the Middle East and Africa, built through her team’s advisory work, that serves as the foundation for better lives and stronger societies.
