#LifeLessons - The Biggest Life Learnings of Smart Salem's Amanda Gravitis

NAME: Amanda Gravitis

AGE: 33 yrs

INSTAGRAM HANDLE: @amanda.gravitis

JOB TITLE: CEO Smart Salem

Amanda Gravitis has an ambitious vision to bring the future of preventative healthcare to the UAE and to empower people and communities to live better, healthier and longer lives. As CEO of Smart Salem - Dubai’s fastest and most premium visa medical testing and wellness center – she is revolutionising the government’s visa medical testing process and driving advanced health, wellness and longevity screenings across Dubai.

Smart Salem is most well-known for offering Dubai’s fastest visa medical test (in and out in 10 minutes and results in 30!) but its mission goes well beyond levelling up the mandatory visa tests – Amanda and her team’s purpose is to empower ‘better, healthier and longer lives’ through advanced screenings including hormones, DNA, gut microbiome, allergies and more.

Amanda is outspoken about the importance of regular comprehensive health screening in order to gain a baseline of your health because ‘you can’t treat what you don’t measure’. Early identification of risks is a key factor in ensuring better outcomes for patients, however Smart Salem’s research, done in November 2025, found that one in five people hasn’t had a health check in the last year and one in 10 has never had one.

Understanding that accessibility and convenience are key to the Dubai market, and could be a factor in preventing people getting important preventative tests, Amanda introduced a comprehensive range of cutting-edge wellness services designed to optimize healthspan (how long you live healthily, free from disease) with the same offering as their expedited visa medical testing – fast, easy and premium.

Now they help thousands of customers every month improve their healthspan through advanced tests such as Smart DNA testing for age, skin & hair health and nutrition, specialised male and female health screenings, allergy and AI-powered gut microbiome analysis in their three state- of-the-art facilities.

Today Amanda shares with us her biggest life learnings to-date:

#LIFELESSON – 1 - Say Yes !

Be open to opportunities and be prepared to work hard. I would never have got where I was if I hadn’t said yes to every opportunity that came my way which meant I was exposed to lots of different industries, people and situations. On the flip side saying no is the fastest way to stop growing, stop learning and stop making connections. Saying yes also means working hard - if you're a leader, don't expect anyone to work harder than you. I do have high expectations of my team, however I will get stuck into any and every role.

#LIFELESSON – 2 - Never underestimate the importance of your health

I’ve been fortunate to have had a very accelerated career, from the start I pushed myself hard and it worked - I achieved alot in a short time but my success came at a cost to my health. I was overworking myself and constantly in fight or flight mode and this manifested as symptoms like hair loss and hormone imbalances. I decided to get tested and this really was a wake-up call for me. I made changes to ensure I had better work life balance and told myself to never underestimate the importance of my health again. However, when I became CEO years later, I felt fatigued again and my productivity dropped. I thought it was part of the job, but reminding myself of my previous experience I finally did a blood screening test and a gut microbiome analysis and discovered that I had low vitamin B9 and it wasn’t being absorbed by my gut (something I would have noticed earlier before symptoms had I been doing regular routine check- ups). The first step was having this knowledge and then I worked with a dietitian to replenish my B9 stores. The lesson for me was – your health is the single most important thing that impacts your personal performance and investing in your health is actually investing in your long term success, in all areas of your life including outside of your career. A secondary learning is that

burnout is not always burnout – sometimes it’s actually a relatively simple health issue that can be fixed so always get tested before you make assumptions about mental strain and your ability to cope with stress.

#LIFELESSON – 3 - It’s ok to fail

Nothing was ever done perfectly the first time – every person, practice or product that seems ‘perfect’ had been through hundreds of iterations and will continue to change and improve forever. As an entrepreneur if there’s one lesson I’ve learned it that there’s no one point in life where you stop and go well that’s it, I’ve done it all perfectly and I can stop now. Life is a cycle of continuous improvement and that means being ok with failure. I have learned a lot from failing, and I consciously try to ensure that my philosophy – for myself, and also for my team - is it’s okay to fail, as long as you learn from it. Making the wrong decision is better than making no decision, and we will never always get things right or perfect the first time. Don't hyper focus on what isn’t perfect, just ask yourself if it's good enough?

Currently, Smart Salem is offering 300aed cashback on their wellness tests when you get a visa renewal medical test with them to help support people’s well-being in this difficult time. www.smartsalem.ae