I.F. Yusif

When you listen to I.F. ("Joe") Yusif talk about the American-Arab Association for Commerce and Industry (AAACI), you could be excused for wondering if he might be the association's cheerleader or team captain, rather than its executive director. The fact is, he is all three.

Only one of the roles is official, of course. As executive director of AAACI, Mr. Yusif runs the operations of an organization in New York City which works to facilitate U.S.-Arab trade, particularly for its 200 corporate members, most of whom are American. But during nine years with the organization he has developed some strong convictions about how to go about the job —and he argues his views with feisty exuberance both in-house and out.

One of his convictions is that AAACI is definitely a team operation, and that it is not enough for a member company simply to pay its dues and then sit back passively.

"I need their involvement," he says, "and I spend a lot of my time encouraging members to get involved. I want their people to come in for a chat, tell me their problems, invite me to some of their meetings, let me take them to lunch. The more I know about what they do, the better I can serve them."

Taking a Public Position

One way the association serves its members is to represent them, collectively, when it deals with governments on trade issues. "Not all companies like to take a public position on a sensitive political subject," says Mr. Yusif. "We do it on their behalf. For example, I have gone down to Washington to testify on anti-boycott legislation, passing along the consensus of companies who export to the Arab world. Many companies would never want to testify on their own."

Mr. Yusif also plays an in-house consulting role, helping member companies with advice when they run into special problems in selling their products to Arab markets. This is a service which he also finds he can perform more usefully if he has an ongoing, close relationship with as many members as possible. "I am often able to help out a company when I discover it has run into a snag similar to one I recently had to unravel for another member," he explains.

Among other services carried out by AAACI for its members is a varied program of formal and informal meetings. What it calls its "forum" luncheons feature distinguished speakers who in recent times have included such people as King Hussein of Jordan, the Secretary General of OPEC, the Foreign Minister of Morocco, and the Minister of Industry of Saudi Arabia. At its "business briefings," U.S. officials serving in Arab countries or in Washington talk off-the-record to small groups of members. At informal luncheons, members meet with diplomatic and consular representatives of a particular Arab country for round-the-table discussions. On occasion, the association gives an all-day conference for an in-depth probe of a current topic. It frequently holds industry workshops for a restricted industrial segment of the membership. AAACI has also organized private trade missions—which have visited Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Morocco, Qatar and the U.A.E.

For these and other contributions to the expansion of U.S.-Arab trade, AAACI has twice won the President's "E Star" Award for excellence in export promotion. The latest award was presented in New York last February by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Malcolm Baldridge, at a banquet attended by upward of 200 diplomats and businessmen from the U.S. and the Arab world.

Making Contacts and Digging

Mr. Yusif became executive director in 1978, after spending four years as director of research and then deputy executive director. His background when he joined up in 1974 was not in business but in journalism. But he says that two of the things he was trained to do as a journalist—"make contacts and dig hard to get information"—represent much of what he has to do in his present work, and the training has served him well. Since coming to AAACI he has also, in his spare time, obtained an MBA from Seton Hall University (with a major in marketing and a minor in management), along with a certificate in international business.

Mr. Yusif's first degree (a BA) was in journalism from the American University in Cairo, in 1951, and five years later he got a graduate certificate in television broadcasting from the University of Missouri. Starting with his university days until 1960, when he joined the Associated Press in New York as a photo editor and stayed for more than 14 years, he carried out a fascinating variety of jobs: translator for the U.S. Information Service, newspaper reporter in Cairo, U.N. correspondent for an Egyptian weekly; press officer for Yemen at the Arab League; and an editor for a small, country weekly in Illinois. His writing credits include everything from covering ballet performances and fashion shows to writing a book on how to operate a metal workshop—with lots of stories on business and politics in between. Right now, he edits AAACI's monthly Bulletin on economic and commercial affairs.