Written by: Dan Fost

Meet four distinguished alumni who took different routes to their careers overseas.

Practicing real estate law in Dubai

Saladin Aljurf’s (92BA, 98JD) parents immigrated to the United States from the West Bank, but his mother returned to give birth to all of her children there. Aljurf grew up in Iowa City, speaking Arabic at home, and attended the University of Iowa for his BA and JD.

He worked at a law firm in Washington, D.C., for five years with clients in the UAE. Eventually, Aljurf joined a Dubai law firm in 2006.

“When I joined, Dubai started to offer freehold property to foreigners,” Aljurf said. “I was put on the real estate team and got involved in some of the largest hotel and retail transactions.”

“It is good to be lucky,” he added. “I was in the right place at the right time.”

Intriguingly, he recently worked remotely for Neom, a 10,200-square-mile planned area in Saudi Arabia, drafting the property laws to govern the economic zone. “It was quite cerebral,” Aljurf said.

Rather than move to the desert and help build Neom from the ground up, he decided to remain in Dubai—“a place that is so cosmopolitan and the safest place you will ever live. My wife could literally wake up at three in the morning and go to an ATM anywhere, and nothing would happen to her.” Currently at Greenberg Traurig, he advises on the largest developments in the region.

Aljurf advises young attorneys who want to work abroad, especially in Dubai, to practice in the U.S. first. “If you get two to five years under your belt, you are going to be so much more valuable,” he said.

Seeking international justice in The Hague

Charlotte Perez (19JD) has witnessed some of the most intense cases to come before international tribunals in The Hague, including the prosecution of Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladić for war crimes and five members of Hezbollah accused of assassinating Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri.

Perez worked in The Hague at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon before landing at Iowa, where she took international law classes with Professors Stella Elias, Mark Osiel, Aaron Page, and John Reitz, and worked for Associate Dean Adrien Wing.

Iowa did not have an established Hague-based externship, but June Tai, director of the law school’s field placement programs, told Perez—in true Iowa Field of Dreams fashion—“if you can dream it and build it, the law school will make it happen.”

With that support, Perez spent a semester in The Hague on the Mladić case. After law school, she clerked for two years in Minnesota before returning to the Netherlands for an advanced LLM in international law at Leiden University. She continues to work in the field, where she “finds the work fascinating, engaging, and meaningful.”

While at Iowa, Perez made one more important connection: She met Robert Carolan (70JD), who had capped his career as a Minnesota district judge with two decades working in international courts, hearing cases on human rights abuses in Kosovo and Myanmar. Not only did Carolan have excellent advice, but he had three sons who also attended Iowa—including Paul (06MD), a radiologist, who married Perez. “We are a true Hawkeye family,” Perez said.

Managing high-profile transactions in Prague

When Michael Mullen (96JD) was growing up in North Liberty, Iowa, his father led the art department at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids. It is hard to imagine now, but in those pre-internet days, his father would take the family to Europe in the summers so he could photograph works of art for his classes.

“At a very young age, I got acclimated to the European environment,” Mullen said. He learned Spanish and French along the way. He graduated from Grinnell College in 1989, just as the Berlin Wall fell, and moved to the newly formed Czech Republic. “It was a blossoming and reopening of society,” he said. “It was a wonderful time to be in Prague.”

While studying Czech at Charles University, Mullen taught English and worked for translation agencies. As he translated contracts, he thought, “I could write better contracts,” and he began attending classes at Charles University law school. Lawyers working in Prague advised him to get a U.S. education, so he returned to Iowa for law.

He worked for a global law firm in Chicago for three years, which sent him to Turkey, Romania, and then the Czech Republic. While in Prague, another firm recruited him, and he has spent the rest of his career there, helping the country transform its banking sector while privatizing its banks, rebuilding state-owned enterprises, and assisting western companies establishing businesses.

He worked for various firms, including leading the Central and Eastern European legal practice of PricewaterhouseCoopers. By then, he had married, had young children, and wanted to stay closer to home, so he joined former colleagues who founded the BADOKH law firm in Prague.

Mullen has worked on high-profile transactions, such as Molson Coors’ €3.5 billion acquisition of Central European brewer Starbev and a €6 billion acquisition attempt of regional lottery company Allwyn.

Reflecting on his journey, Mullen said he enjoys setting goals and working step-by-step to achieve them.

“I had seen what was possible, and I wanted to experience it,” he said. “I definitely had a plan. Anything in life is achievable if, despite inevitable setbacks, you have a plan and stick to it.”

Working for the social good in London and beyond

Gilbey Strub (90JD) has used the knowledge gleaned in her years as a partner at a global law firm to help establish creative legal instruments that work for the benefit of society. One of those instruments helped alleviate European taxpayers’ burden to bail out failing banks, while another—“green bonds”—forged a path for governments and corporations to raise money to help the transition to a low-carbon economy.

Strub worked on the first high-yield (or “junk”) bond offerings in Europe in the 1990s, founding and leading a European trade association that established investor protections. After the 2008 global financial crisis, her association became part of the Association for Financial Markets in Europe, where she led a banking initiative that created the concept of—instead of a bailout—a “bail-in.”

“It simply meant that investors bear losses when they invest in banks, instead of taxpayers,” Strub said.

With green bonds, Strub followed in the footsteps of war bonds and railroad and highway bonds of the past, galvanizing social values to fund environmentally sustainable businesses and climate-friendly government projects.

An opportunity to study abroad during her time at Iowa Law whet Strub’s appetite for international law. She was one of the first to participate in a summer program that sent Iowa law students to study in France.

Strub lived in London for 27 years, becoming a British citizen, and has now returned to her native Iowa City, where she is active with the Driftless Water Defenders, among other nonprofits. “It was a good time to come back,” Strub said. “All hands on deck are needed. Iowans need to step up and reclaim their state and arrest the degradation of the environment and the water system.”