When Hazeena Mazood walked into Tenaris’s first office in the Middle East office in Dubai in 1996, the company looked very different from the Tenaris the world knows today. The regional team was small, the industry was shifting, and the Gulf was about to become one of the most dynamic energy markets in the world.
Over the next thirty years, Mazood would move across roles in sales, quality management, supply chain, HSE, compliance, and commercial operations, eventually leading Commercial Processes and Projects for Tenaris Middle East. Along the way, she saw the Dubai office grow into a regional hub, and helped build the systems and relationships that underpin the company's presence in the Middle East today. Her story is, in many ways, the story of how Tenaris took root in the Gulf.
One of Hazeena's earliest milestones was implementing ISO 9001 in the Dubai office, a process that would shape how the regional operation worked for years to come. Quality systems, she says, are the language a global company uses to trust itself across borders.
As Tenaris in the Middle East expanded, Mazood supported operational and commercial transformations across the region, work that required her to learn new disciplines on the move and partner with colleagues across countries and time zones.
One of the greatest challenges in her career arrived with the COVID-19 period. During those months, Mazood balanced responsibilities across Associate Retention Control (AREC), Health, Safety and Environment, and Quality, while regularly commuting between Dubai and Abu Dhabi through some of the strictest movement restrictions the region had seen. "COVID tested all of us in ways we had never experienced before. Every day brought new challenges, but it also showed the importance of resilience, teamwork, and staying focused on people. Despite the uncertainty, we continued supporting the business and each other, and that period reinforced how much can be achieved when everyone works together," recalls Hazeena.
Across her journey, Mazood returns to a handful of ideas that have shaped how she works: the things that hold up no matter what role you are in or what part of the world you are working from.
First, that reputation is built one choice at a time: "Your reputation is your lifelong asset. Protect it with every choice you make," she says. For Mazood, integrity is based on the small, daily decisions that, over decades, become the way colleagues describe you when you are not in the room.
Second, Mazood is certain that relationships outlast roles: "The relationships you make matter more than you think. The work you do is important, but the way you support others, collaborate, and make people feel along the way is what leaves a lasting impact." Across thirty years, Mazood worked with hundreds of colleagues across multiple countries. The technical work changed often. The trust she built with people, she says, is what stayed.
Third, Mazood has learned that growth never happens in comfort: "Most people resist new systems, new processes, or new colleagues because they feel uncomfortable. But growth never happens in comfort. Every time you adapt, you prove to yourself that you can handle more than you thought." This may be the lesson that defines Mazood’s career most clearly. Few people move across as many disciplines as she did — sales, quality, supply chain, HSE, compliance, commercial — and each transition required her to start learning again.
A career, and a region, grown together
Mazood's thirty years map closely onto the arc of Tenaris in the Middle East, from a small Dubai office to a fully integrated regional operation serving some of the world's most demanding energy customers. Her path through the company reflects that careers in Tenaris sometimes are not linear, and that the people who thrive are those willing to keep learning. "If I have achieved anything in these thirty years, it is because of the people around me; managers who guided me, colleagues who became friends, and teams who trusted me."