Sultan Qaboos University
McDonald was born in Toronto, Canada. In the late 1970s, McDonald's family moved to Saudi Arabia. His father (a doctor) and mother (a teacher and nurse) were involved in the early days of both the King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Riyadh and the Sultan Qaboos University in Muscat, after which they moved to Dubai. McDonald said, "We lived right near Jumeirah Beach but there was no hotel, no developments or anything, and our small compound was about the only thing that existed.