While headlines fixate on regional instability, the UAE keeps doing something remarkable: growing. In this episode of the AYU Family Office Podcast, we sit down with Oscar Orellana-Hyder of Cordell Partners, an executive headhunter who places elite talent inside the Gulf's family offices, to understand why capital, people, and ambition keep flowing toward the Emirates even as the map around them shifts.

Oscar offers a grounded, real-world look at the infrastructure underpinning the UAE's family office boom: the policy, the stability, and the quality of life that have turned the region into a genuine safe harbour for wealth and the talent that manages it. From there the conversation gets practical. How do you hire the right people for a family office? What does relocating across the GCC actually involve? And what are the realities of raising from established families, including what works, what doesn't, and the trust that has to come first?

Whether you're building a family office, advising one, or simply trying to understand why the Gulf is pulling ahead, this is a candid, optimistic conversation about resilience, opportunity, and the people powering the region's rise.

This episode is sponsored by Canoe Intelligence. Canoe is on a mission is to unlock efficiencies in alternative investment processes by introducing purpose-built automation into the workflows of institutional investors, asset servicers, capital allocators, and wealth managers. Learn more via the link below.