Amb. Dr. Dunston is Building a Film City, Wildlife Sanctuary and Pharma Hub — Here’s Why It Matters!

Dr. Dunston traces his path from lecturer to Group CEO, outlining long-term destination projects, a talent-first hiring/training approach, and impactful humanitarian work across Africa.

Ambassador Dr. Dunston Pereira traveled a career path few anticipate: from a young computer science lecturer to a corporate operations leader, entrepreneur, and today the Group CEO of The Private Office of Sheikh Ahmed bin Faisal Al Qassimi for Consultancy and Project Development. Across the latest episode of The Dollar Diaries, Dunston reflects on a life shaped by hands-on problem solving, a long-term vision for infrastructure-led development, and a humanitarian impulse that ties every project back to people. This blog unpacks the themes and lessons from the conversation—resilience, systems thinking, talent development, and patient capital—while drawing practical takeaways for leaders, founders, and anyone interested in impact-driven investing.

Humble Beginnings

Dunston’s story begins in education. At 23 he taught computer science at a women’s college in Mangalore—an environment that tested his confidence and sharpened his empathy. Early exposure to teaching, ragging, and long nights of lesson preparation gave him his first lessons in resilience and the human side of leadership. From there he joined the Murugappa Group in India as a management trainee and rotated through production planning, manufacturing, product design, and logistics. That rotation-through-functions model is often the secret ingredient in building systems thinkers: Dunston was not just trained in one silo, he operated across them, learning the levers that connect procurement to production to distribution.

Those 15 years at Murugappa shaped his operational discipline. Faced with high logistics costs and fragmented warehouses, Dunston drove consolidation and third-party logistics adoption, cutting costs and unlocking better delivery performance via clear KPIs and vendor accountability. These anecdotes aren’t simply nostalgia—they reveal a practical leadership pattern: identify the largest cost or friction point, design an operational experiment (consolidate, outsource, or re-engineer), set measurable KPIs, and iterate. That pattern reappears when he later scales ventures under his own name and as the head of a family office.

In 2010 he stepped into entrepreneurship. It was not a romantic leap; it was a deliberate choice rooted in an entrepreneurial itch combined with a readiness to shoulder risk. Starting with his own capital, he built distribution, customer care, and facility-management verticals—eventually employing hundreds across multiple branches. The decision to hire local talent from disadvantaged backgrounds rather than defaulting to seasoned hires reflects a leadership philosophy that prioritizes capability-building and social uplift over short-term efficiency. He invested not only salaries but training—English, computers, basic accountancy—so his hires could grow beyond immediate roles. That investment paid off in loyalty and long-term human capital for his ventures.

A Moment of Crisis

Two major life shocks—Devastating floods in 2018 that wiped out home, office, and warehouse, followed by a period that included a heart attack and depression—could have ended Dunston’s mission. Instead, they catalyzed a deeper alignment between personal purpose and public service. A chance meeting with Sheikh Ahmed in the UK led to a new chapter: joining the Private Office and working closely with royal stakeholders. Dunston emphasizes the humility and freedom that come with trust in his current role—freedom not to be micromanaged but to conceive big, patient projects.

That trust has allowed him to channel his energies into projects where the social return matters as much as monetary return. He is deeply involved with NGO partnerships across Africa, from installing toilets at girls’ schools to government-level infrastructure collaboration. The combination of systems-level investments (roads, airports, pharmaceuticals) and targeted humanitarian interventions (sanitation, jobs) offers a blueprint for blended impact: use large-scale capital projects to create economic value and simultaneously deliver targeted social goods.

Long Horizon Investments & Ecosystem Building

Perhaps the most striking theme of the conversation is Dunston’s investment horizon. Where most modern investors demand defined payback periods and fast IRRs, Dunston speaks in decades. He describes investments—like a Film City, a 380M wildlife sanctuary, or a pharmaceutical city—not as quick profit centers but as ecosystem builders and destination projects whose returns compound over generations. This patience changes strategy: the focus shifts from arbitraging short-term inefficiencies to constructing infrastructure that attracts and multiplies downstream economic activity (tourism, production services, training academies, logistics hubs).

Take the Film City: rather than replicate isolated studio facilities, Dunston and his team are designing an integrated destination with infrastructure, talent pipelines, and tourism components. He recognizes two immediate gaps in the regional film market—infrastructure and talent—and addresses them in tandem. Infrastructure provides the physical canvas for production; talent ensures local crews can handle large shoots quickly. Similarly, his pharmaceutical city aims to cluster manufacturers, reduce cost via scale and packaging choices, and direct a majority of production (60%) towards affordable supplies for African markets. These are not straightforward factories—they are anchor projects meant to reshape market geography.

Operationally, Dunston relies on joint ventures and private consortiums. He often contributes land or facilitation while partnering with capital and domain experts for construction and operations. This model disperses risk, brings in technical mastery, and allows the family office to play the role of ecosystem architect rather than sole operator. It also enables a multiplier effect: the Private Office’s presence in 22 countries and a network of country directors creates channels for rapid geographic expansion and talent mobilization.

Talent-first Philanthropy

Dunston repeatedly returns to the human dimension. He reviews nearly 1,000 resumes a month and maintains a database to place people into openings across group ventures. His hiring bias deliberately favors candidates from modest backgrounds—people whose fathers might be mechanics, painters, or masons—and he invests in their education. This is not charity in the one-off sense; it’s capacity-building. By pairing jobs with soft- and technical-skills training, he ensures employees can survive—and thrive—in new roles. His practical approach to social impact is instructive for family offices and corporations seeking to embed social return into business models.

He also emphasizes governance and accountability. Every joint venture is categorized (A, B, C), and the A-level companies receive monthly board-level reviews. These aren’t micromanagement rituals but systemic oversight suited to the family office model where brand reputation and profit share intersect. If a JV underperforms, it affects both the balance sheet and the family office’s name—so active stewardship is both fiduciary and reputational.

A Roadmap for Leaders & Impact Investors

What practical lessons can leaders and investors draw from Dunston’s conversation? First, build cross-functional experience. His early rotations through operations, production, and logistics created the mental models he applies to larger projects. Second, treat talent investment as a strategic asset. Training entry-level hires creates loyalty and a long-term pipeline that becomes a competitive advantage. Third, adopt patient capital for infrastructure plays. Some projects—destination cities, pharmaceutical hubs, conservation sanctuaries—need time to compound value; short-term IRR thinking will systematically underfund these opportunities. Fourth, design partnerships intentionally: use JVs to combine land, capital, and operational expertise while preserving the family office’s role as steward.

Finally, remember the humility of service. Dunston’s humanitarian work—partnering with NGOs to build toilets, improve education, and funnel affordable medicines into African markets—anchors his commercial strategy in social outcomes. That dual commitment to profit and purpose is what gives his long-view projects their moral legitimacy: they are not monuments to legacy but infrastructure for uplift.

The episode with Dunston Pereira is a useful corrective to the short-term frenzy that often dominates business and investing conversations. It’s a reminder that scale often requires patience, that talent can be grown when given dignity and opportunity, and that infrastructure can be designed to circulate both wealth and welfare. Whether you’re an operator, an investor, or a civic leader, his lessons are clear: identify the systemic chokepoints, design for scale, invest in people, and hold the long view. In an era of instant metrics and quarterly pressure, Dunston’s patient, people-first approach stands out as both strategic and humane—and it may just be the model more leaders should study.

If you enjoyed this exploration of The Dollar Diaries episode, tune in to hear the full conversation and hear Dunston’s voice describe these projects and people firsthand—his mix of practical detail and philosophical calm is what makes the episode memorable.