Building a community: how I started a student society

Why I decided to start a student society

When I started at the University of Birmingham Dubai, I was genuinely excited about the academic side, but after a few weeks on campus, I noticed a gap. There wasn’t really a dedicated space for students who cared about entrepreneurship, startups, and building things. The conversations I wanted to have about funding rounds, business models, and what was happening in the GCC startup scene were happening in one-on-one chats over coffee, not in any organised way on campus.

I suspected I wasn’t alone in feeling this way, and after a few conversations, I found a few other students had been thinking the same thing. A small group of us decided to do something about it together, and that is how the Student Entrepreneurship Association (SEA) started.

Turning an idea into a real society

Starting a student society sounds more complicated than it is, but it does take some legwork. My first step was reaching out to the Student Experience team to understand the process, things like filling in the official forms, putting together a basic constitution, and building a committee. They were genuinely helpful throughout, which I hadn’t expected going in.

Finding the right people for the founding committee took longer than I expected. You need people who are genuinely invested, not just interested on paper. But once we had a core group who were all pulling in the same direction, things started to move quickly. If I’m honest, those early planning sessions, usually in a corner of the library with our laptops and too much coffee, were some of the best moments of my first year.

Launching our first SEA event

Our first event was nerve-wracking. We’d promoted it through Instagram, WhatsApp groups, and word of mouth, the usual student channels, and we genuinely didn’t know how many people would show up. It turned out to be more than we expected.

That first session was a panel discussion with founders and professionals from the Dubai startup ecosystem. It wasn’t flawless, the microphone cut out at one point, and we’d slightly underestimated how much seating we’d need, but people were engaged, asking questions, exchanging contacts. That moment made me realise people wanted this and were willing to show up for it.

How SEA grew beyond our expectations

Since those early days, SEA has grown to over 600 members. The event that really showed me what the society could become was our AI Summit. It brought together students from around the world, both in person and online, alongside investors from the UAE and overseas who came to watch student teams pitch their ideas. Seeing something that started with us chatting over coffee turn into this big event felt surreal.

That experience gave me the confidence to go further. Alongside a close team, I founded 180 Degrees Consulting from scratch. This time I was more involved in shaping it from day one: building the structure, recruiting the founding committee, and working out what we actually wanted to offer students.

The University was incredibly supportive throughout the process, helping us navigate the setup and connecting us with the right people.

We partnered exclusively with Strategy& (PwC’s strategy consulting arm) and focused the society on giving back to the community. Students work on real consulting projects for non-profit and social enterprise clients, applying what they’re learning in lectures to challenges that actually matter.

Watching students who’d never done consulting before present recommendations to real organisations, especially knowing how unsure some of them were at the start, has been one of the most rewarding parts of my time here.

What starting a society taught me

Starting a society taught me things I honestly would not have picked up in lectures alone. It pushed me to pitch ideas, work with different personalities, and adapt quickly when things did not go to plan. Looking back:

• Those early conversations mattered, as they helped confirm other students were actually interested before we made anything official, and putting together a committee early on meant we were not doing everything alone once things got busier.
• Getting the Student Experience team involved from the start also took away a lot of uncertainty and made the process feel manageable. They were genuinely supportive.
• I’m glad we started small. Our first event wasn’t perfect, but it gave us space to learn and build confidence without too much pressure.

My advice to new Birmingham Dubai students

If you’re coming to Birmingham, Dubai and wondering whether the social side of university will live up to your expectations, my experience is that it can, but you might have to help build it. Some of the most meaningful parts of my time here have come from getting involved, showing up consistently, and saying yes to things that felt slightly outside my comfort zone.

If there is already a society that interests you, join it and get involved early. If there isn’t, starting something new is far more achievable than it might seem from the outside. The support is there, and the friends you make through societies often become the memories that stay with you long after university.