Saheba Sodhi, Global Head of Strategy and Experiential at MCH Global, has been named to Inc. Arabia’s Women of Influence 2026, an annual list recognising 60 women driving change across the MENA business community. The list brings together founders, executives, and industry leaders whose work is reshaping how business gets done across the region.
Saheba has spent close to a decade at MCH Global, an award-winning experiential and culture marketing agency headquartered in Dubai and part of the Switzerland-based MCH Group. Across that time, she has helped shape brand narratives for global names including Porsche, TikTok, Wynn Resorts, Google, Emaar, Dubai Culture, and has been closely involved in the agency’s growth from an early-stage startup into a million-dollar business today.
Asked to reflect on the single decision that shaped her career most, Saheba points not to a title or a move, but to a choice to stay. Rather than following the more conventional route of hopping between agencies to climb the ladder, she chose to grow with one business through every phase of its evolution, working across strategy, creative, and business operations rather than staying confined to one lane. It was, by her own account, the slower and less glamorous path. But it meant building an understanding of the business at a structural level, not just the corner of it she was originally hired for, which in turn gave her the ability to contribute meaningfully to both the company’s growth and the growth of the people around her.
That depth, Saheba is quick to add, only carries so far on its own. She is candid about a hard-won lesson: this industry rewards visibility nearly as much as it rewards quality of work. Looking back, she acknowledges staying “quietly good” for longer than was necessary, when she could have claimed a broader leadership scope much earlier. None of that expansion came from a job description or a formal promotion. It came from an internal decision that she belonged in the room before anyone else confirmed it for her.
Claiming that seat, she says, also meant becoming more comfortable with what she brings to it. For years, she describes sanding down the sharper edges of her thinking so it would be more broadly palatable and more easily liked. The realisation that eventually shifted her approach was simple: specificity is not a liability to be managed. More often than not, it is the entire point.
That principle sits at the centre of the advice Saheba offers to women coming up behind her in the industry. The instinct will always be to let the industry absorb you into its existing shape. Her counsel is to resist that pull, gently but consistently, and to recognise that the part of your perspective you feel most tempted to soften is very often your most valuable contribution.
