Photo by Paula Bronstein

Sadiq Gillani (MBA 2006) didn’t set out to build a different kind of career for himself. During his time at HBS, he had a clear, conventional vision of his future. As he told the Portrait Project in 2006, “I am going to devote my life to fixing existing airlines and creating new ones to improve people’s lives.” And he did, first as a consultant to the airline industry and then as chief commercial officer at a low-cost Brazilian airline. But when the company’s IPO was called off and it was sold, Sadiq took a step that has come to define his approach to building what he calls a “portfolio career,” a collection of professional roles instead of one primary job: He made a big ask.

“I sent my CV to six European airline CEOs out of the blue and asked, ‘Do you have anything?’ Two replied, and eventually I got an offer from Lufthansa,” Gillani recalls. He took the role of chief strategy officer—a position his boss told him to think of as “a platform to build upon.” And Gillani did just that. In addition to helping launch and grow Eurowings, the company’s low-cost carrier, he served on boards, advised the World Economic Forum on travel, and started an MBA course on the travel and the airline industries at Stanford University. “It was only when I was at the point of leaving my strategy role that I realized I’d really built up a strong portfolio,” he says.

In 2018, Gillani moved to the carrier Emirates, where he led the in-house consulting team, but he had already begun to think about a full-time portfolio career. “Like with an investment portfolio, you have to think about the composition of that portfolio. What’s the synergy between that portfolio and how does it all come together?” he says. “Then it is all about spotting opportunities, going after them, and articulating the learnings you’ll be bringing back to the company.” A talk Gillani gave at Stanford in May 2021 has received over one million views, highlighting interest in the topic.

The pandemic—and the return to office-based work at many companies, including Emirates—was the final push Gillani needed. In early 2022, he left the airline to dedicate his time to a complete portfolio career with a diverse array of activities, including sitting on the boards of travel companies, advising private equity firms, continuing to educate MBA students, and developing Jungian coaching techniques to help leaders improve their decision-making.

“I think interest in portfolio careers has heightened since the start of the pandemic,” Gillani says. “People are questioning the full-time roles they are in, and they want to be more flexible. At the same time, remote opportunities are increasing, which is an accelerator for everything related to portfolio careers and a differentiator for attracting talent.”

This is the type of flexible and varied work people often aspire to achieve at the end of their career, Gillani says. “Well, why wait?”

How to:
Build a Portfolio Career

Create the space. Choose roles with companies that provide the time and space to pursue skill-building opportunities both within and beyond the company: “Be efficient and develop yourself.”

Build your own brand. You need to understand your own narrative and purpose—and share it widely, through conferences, social media, networking, and media interviews: “I was ‘the airline guy’ already at HBS.”

Be bold. Building a portfolio career requires you to be proactive. “It’s about being confident and spotting opportunities aligned with your goals,” Gillani says. You have to ask for what you want and leverage your network. “If you don’t ask, you won’t get.”

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