Faddy Zouki, The Lebanese Expatriate Who Made A Revolution In Law, Business And The Diplomatic Corps, And The One Who Introduced Hospitality For The First Time To Hospitals
The businessman and lawyer, Faddy Zouki, is an exceptional paradigm of the expatriate who preserved his roots in his motherland in spite of all the circumstances and responsibilities. The young man with a unique charisma travelled to Australia, willing to succeed whatever it takes. We don’t mean by success the academic excellence only, but also the professional and humanitarian one. Zouki exerted a lot of efforts, gave a lot of time and money to build the human being before anything else, and then to build Lebanon indirectly from the Australian territory.
Post-Migration Trauma
Faddy Zouki, from Rachaya Al Foukhar, travelled to Australia for the first time in 1969 with his family and came back to Beirut in 1973. However, when the civil war erupted in Lebanon and with the deterioration of living conditions, the Zouki family fled back to Australia where Faddy resumed his studies, majored in law and graduated in 1992. Zouki’s dreams, just like other youngsters, were big and deeply rooted in him just like the Cedars of Lebanon are rooted in the soil of the country. The whole Milky Way could not contain his joy when he first wore the graduation robe. Back then, he thought that emigration, with all the chances it provided, could introduce him to the work field very easily. However, it gave him the complete opposite of what he desired and put him in front of a very difficult challenge. The guy who travelled to secure a better future was shocked with the reality of job scarcity due to the economic regression Australia was witnessing. Did he give up? No, never. On the contrary, he overcame himself and launched the idea of a project that made history.
The Out Of The Box Project
For Faddy Zouki, the best way to overcome the job crisis in Australia was to think in an untraditional way to create an unfamiliar idea to stay away from competition. The idea of a revolutionary project that had nothing to do with law came to his mind. Where did the idea of this project come from? What is not known to everybody about Faddy, from Rachaya, is that when he was at school, he worked in the University’s cafeteria. Due to this experience, he acquired expertise in the hospitality field. For that reason, when Australia suffered from an economic stagnation, Faddy Zouki decided to explore the world of business from a totally different door. He decided to invest in the field of hospitality and restaurants.
The second surprise was that he decided to open a restaurant with his brothers, Sam and Joseph, in Alfred Hospital in Melbourne. He chose hospitals, not commercial centers, because they are not impacted by the economic stagnation and they are way far from competition in the hospitality field. Through his project, Faddy Zouki tried to improve the experience of employees, patients and visitors at hospitals. The hospitals in Australia are very large, the number of workers in each hospital could sometimes reach 12 thousand employees, and they are visited by nearly 30 thousand visitor a day. The Zouki brothers decided to improve the concept of patient and visitor’s comfort in hospitals. The Zouki shop chain extended to other states of Australia, then reached the Middle East and the United Stated of America.
Lebanon, Always Present
Faddy Zouki founded the Australia New Zealand Lebanon Chamber of Commerce and Industry in order to link Australia to all the needs of the Lebanese people living in it and to help Lebanon economically and humanitarianly, namely after the explosion of Beirut, where the donations exceeded 6 billion U.S. dollars.
Zouki also ensured the education of a lot of Lebanese through the creation of a scholarship funds. He also helped in training and recruiting a lot of law students through his “Zouki Lawyers” association. Moreover, he organized seminars and sent assistance to the Lebanese Army.
The name of businessman and lawyer, Faddy Zouki, is one of the well-known names because of his achievements and charity work. Media shed light on his inspiring story on the “Soufara El Arz” program, hosted by the glorious Lebanese journalist Haifa Charbel, who is constantly trying to show the positive image of Lebanon and the love of the Lebanese diaspora for their country in emigration countries despite the distance, and the “Saro Miye” program that sheds the light on Lebanon’s golden age in all fields, both being broadcasted on MTV Channel.
Faddy Zouki won many awards, such as the Order of Australia Medal and the Australian Ethic Business Award. Moreover, he hold high-level positions such as being appointed as the Honorary Lebanese Consul General to Tasmania, a cassation judge in the Supreme Court of Australia, a member of the Human Rights Commission and of the Equal Opportunities Committee of the state of Victoria in Australia for five years.
