Alternative Investment Pre-program
Jan - May | 12 hours
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An optional class by Cox Business School to prepare the students for the alternative investment program. The class is 3 hours bi-weekly where we go through all investment knowledge and questions asked in investment banking interviews. Personally I took the class to build the skills I learned in my past internships and things learned in class. Hamiz Awan an SMU alumni and the co-founder of plutus 21 took over and taught this class as an initiative to give back to the program. We learned from two different books the interview prep workshop by the head of the program and breaking into wall street interview questions. Before each class we had to read the chapters and come prepared and in the class Hamiz would give us examples in his real work life and throw random questions such as ones in the interview. I feel that the class have prepared me for real interviews and gave me different perspective of the investment world.
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BB&T Emerging Leaders Program
Feb 25-27 | 10 hours
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Two day leadership program by BB&T where we went onto looking how beliefs drive behaviors and in turn produce results. The program showed us how our beliefs drive our leadership behaviors both in a positive and negative way. For example, how a belief that at SMU we are world changers will affect our behavior by studying hard and getting good grades as a result. The program focused on three foundational modules, leaders aren't born, what's your strategy, and the rules of games. We understood that leaders don't become leaders in a day and night, but they go through a leadership ladder where they go from bottom left as task oriented to the top right as relationship oriented. We also learned how to change our mindsets from fixed mindsets to a growth mindset by opening up and being more flexible. I learned that to be a good leader I must give attention to everyone in the team not only in a bad situation but even a good one. To be a good leader I have to lead by example not by being aggressive.
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SMU Tate Lecture Series (Raj Chetty)
Nov 12 | 3 hours
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SMU Tate lectures hosted Raj Chetty economics professor at Harvard University. Chetty had studied how the neighborhood the child was raised in could identify his income in future. His main goal was to achieve the american dream of a better economy for disabilities, to make the children have a higher outcome than their parents. Raj and his team published a cite "oppurtunityatlas.org" where they used big data to join all the information in a map. In this map we can see the jobs and relationship between where the children grew, differences between races affect the average wages of citizens, differences raising kids affect their income, and the move from a poor neighborhood to a rich. Raj illustrates that it is not only the school class that affects children but the connection between the community is an absolute turnover. There are three pillars to stop this from happening; first is to reduce segregation by helping low income families to move to high opportunity areas. Second, placing big investments in low opportunity areas to increase the opportunity and economy of that area. Finally, improving higher education in all areas especially the low income areas. The talk by Raj have taught me how big data is very efficient in giving conclusions regarding social problems. Also I learned that to benefit the whole start with yourself, family, community, and then the national.
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Michigan Private Equity Conference
October 24-25 | 10 hours
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Since I interned in the private equity department at ADIA, a passion grew up on private equity in general. In school I looked at all opportunities on that and even out of school which made me attend the Michigan PE Conference. I had no idea about how big Ross School of Business was until I was in the middle of that conference between all the other Ross alumni. The conference went through all different sectors from healthcare, technology, consumers adding it up with sub panels that attendants could choose regarding on their interest. One of the sub panels I attended was the opportunities and strategies in technology, where the good and bad opportunities of tech were discussed. For example, cloud owners (Google, Amazon, IBM) today have made a barrier of entry to other venture capitals. Even block chain was discussed and Dan Spillane the CRO of Nerdery was saying that the life of blockchain could not be predicted yet, where it still considered as a venture capital. The keynote of the conference was Jay Hoag a university of michigan alumni and the founding general partner of TCV, a venture capital investment firm. Mr. Hoag was one of the first people who invested in Netflix, Airbnb..much more. He gave a presentation that was one of the best, even better than many ted talks. He started with a picture of him and his professor who had the first venture capital class in the world. Hoag gave a flashback of how technology began in 1980 having fax machines, and fast forwarded to today by having the seven of the most valuable companies being tech companies. How the market cap of tech companies rose incredibly, and one of the reasons is to see what is in our pockets (mobiles), what is infant of us (laptops), and that everything we do today has tech. Hoag concluded with the subject of data revolution and how it will incredibly also change things. Personally, after my experience in ADIA this conference made me put what I saw in the operation side into real life examples. I learned that we have to originate ourselves in a young age, take risks, and put ourselves in a CEO shoes. I also have networked with different students and employees from different backgrounds of the business world. I have met the managing director of venture at Cleveland clinic where we had a good talk about his experience in Abudhabi and how Cleveland clinic have published an investment route to succeed the change in the health sector.
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Abu Dhabi Investment Authority
Jul- Aug 2019
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In the summer of 2019 I interned in the Private Equity Department of Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund. As a business analyst intern I learned how the mechanism of private equity works in the firms. I experienced the day to day job of these analysts and did due diligence on previous and potential investments. I interned in the American team where we looked at private companies based in the United States. With the whole experience attending meetings and learning from my other colleagues, I was also given a case study to put what I learn into action. The case study was based on a private company and I had to present a screen of the success or failure of the investment backed up by due diligence and an excel LBO of the expected value of the company. The internship gave me a valuable skills and a perspective of how a life of an analyst looks like. My goal is to push these skills further in the university and alternative experiences.
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2018/2019
Network in Dallas Zoo
April 2019 | 4 hours
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The Dedman college young alumni and the dean’s research council reception invited the SMU community and alumni for an evening at the Dallas zoo. The evening brought Professors, alumni, and current students together in an unforgettable night at the zoo. The professors presented their researches; one of them was Dr. Brayn, who is a chemistry professor and working on the human magnetic field, how the butterflies know their direction by the magnetic field. So Dr. Brayn’s research is to know more about the human magnetic field. Moreover, as a student, I had a chance to meet different professors and alumnus. One of the alumni was Gloria Snead, who hosted us at the zoo because she is a board member at the zoo. The evening was filled with socializing. Another alumni was Bradley Wilson, who is a financial advisor in the private wealth of Wills Forgo, I got the perspective of how the life of an employee who graduated from SMU is like. I learned from Gloria that “we always like to be belonged, we feel comfortable between our people.” However, that's why she has traveled everywhere, and she is still traveling to represent her self as a proud American citizen and experiencing different cultures. Gloria reminded me of every student who is abroad we like to be between our Emarati roommates, but we have to always remember that we are here also to represent ourselves as a proud Emaratis. The night in the zoo taught me a lesson, to always be open to everyone professors, classmates, and even strangers.
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The Future of Blockchain
November 2018 | 2 hours
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Cox Business school brought their alumni who work in the Crypto field to talk about Blockchain and its future. Two alumni who started an investment company Plutus 21 after they graduated from SMU, came to tell us how Blockchain will change the future. The workshop began with the history of money how people used to trade for necessities and shifted till today as bitcoin, which is the first digital mode of money. I understood that Blockchain is an open, decentralized database, which will make the transaction of any value directly. The blockchain uses are endless; it is not only about money, but it is also more than that. For example, to buy a coffee from Starbucks, it will take four transactions Starbucks, the bank, and the credit card, which will make Starbucks pay .45 interest to the bank. However, Blockchain will make it in one transaction without any interest. Blockchain is the technology of human freedom, but it still needs a push from governments to say it is legitimate. In this workshop, I learned the difference between cryptocurrency and Blockchain; Blockchain is the chain of blocks that has the cryptocurrency in one of its blocks. I also learned why Blockchain is one of the safest clouds because it is created from binary codes and to hack one block we need to turn off all computers and internets in the world.
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Abu Dhabi Fund for Development
July 2018 | 80 hours
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Abudhabi Fund for Development was established before the emirates unite by His Highness Sheikh Zayed to develop the third world countries. After ten years of the establishment of ADFD, there was excess money, so ADFD decided to invest with the excess money through bonds, deposits, and invest in private equity funds. ADFD consists of 4 major departments, Human resources, Finance, Investment, and Operations. Operation is the department that is responsible for the loans and grants that are given to other countries. Investment has two sub-departments that are treasury and equity where treasury is responsible for the bonds and deposits, and equity is responsible for investing in companies and private equity fund. I interned explicitly in the equity department, where I learned how to read through the annual reports of different companies. I learned how to create a monthly report of the invested companies in ADFD. Before interning, I always used to hear about the equity, but today I understood what equity stands for and what fields the equity run in a company. This internship will help me in my business classes at SMU by having the chance to experience the subjects I will study in real life before learning it. I’ve also had an opportunity to look at what I want to be in the future, an analyst in private equity.
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YEAR 2017/2018
The Diplomacy Sport
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Jeff Bezos at SMU
April 20, 2018 | 2 hours
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Before attending this session, I did not even know that Bezos is the wealthiest person on planet earth. I thought he would only talk about his success story and how he created the biggest shopping online store (Amazon), but I was surprised of the potential he had as a successful person who wanted to use his success in the help of humanity. In this discussion, I have learned a lot from Bezos, but the three main takeouts have changed the way I was thinking. The first is when Bezos said:"I love my job because when I go to my office, I work in the future and stay 2 or 3 years in future." These words can be taken in action for everything we do in life, for example, study for a test before 2 or 3 weeks. The second thing I learned from Bezos is we need a mentor or someone to step into our lives, to change or to be successful. The third thing that I was surprised about is that Bezos is working for a long-term vision to build space vehicles, he is taking his amazon lottery and making the heavyweight to help others create the lower weight like a space company. His words always pop in my mind and I think he is not just a wealthy person, but he is a life changer.
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Tide Talk
April 19, 2018 | 3hours
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Tide is the school laundry, and they hosted their first talk at SMU, the subject was about the digital media and the digital advertisements. The speakers Sundar Raman, Tommy Swanson, and Trey Bowels discussed the digital media from there perspectives as successful people. I learned that companies want to always be in front of people by sharing digital advertisements, and that to make people remember their brands and effect people by recognizing these companies when they go shopping. Technology has changed how people buy and sell this is the reason why advertisement have to change too. I was surprised that there are online tracking by different companies and they share it with other companies, this is why if anyone was searching for something on google this thing will pop on every website. It is interesting that even in the Middle East businesses have changed and shifted to the digital advertisement.
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TedxUTA
April 12, 2018 | 5 hours
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I always watched TedX on Youtube, but this time I wanted to be part of the audience. I found a lot of Ted talks around Texas, so I chose the one that is hosted by the University of Texas in Arlington. The talk had six speakers with different stories and ideas. I was interested in two different speakers that I learned from their experiences a lot. The first is Julienne Greer who talked about the human-robot interaction, by explaining that it’s not dangerous, but it’s useful to humanity. Second, Jeff Williams, the founder of taste project a non-profit business. Jeff’s restaurant has no price on the menu because his goal is to make people feel welcome in his restaurant. His idea is to build a healthy community and to make people who are food insecure find healthy food to eat. Jeff Said “ it’s not feeding people, but people who come are dignified, loved, and cared for.” It is interesting to hear and interact with the stories and the success of the speakers, it gives us a chance to look at the world from there different personal lenses.
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2018 Crain Leadership Summit (Next Generation Leadership)
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Attended the 2017 Student Forum in Washington
November 2017 | 72 hours
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It's always nice to be back with the emirate students in DC for the UAE summit. This year the UAE forum was more exciting and more useful than last year. I learned new things and shared my experience with my friends, it's always helpful to hear the success from people who come from the same culture, and have the same background it motivates us to do things that others think of as impossible. The best part is the ADIA meeting where we had the opportunity to meet the ADIA employers and discuss our plan, giving us what is ADIA’s goal will be, and how to be ready for our next challenge. The speakers this year were special, for example, her excellency Ohood bint Khalfan Al Roumi the minister of State For Happiness, and number of Ministers that motivate us as emiraties to challenge ourselves and be the first in every challenge.
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Certificate From the The Protocol School Of Washington
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Internship at Abudhabi Securities Exchange
July 16 - July 27, 2017 | 70 hours
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I always wanted to learn about stocks because every time someone talks about it, I would get lost. In the summer, I decided after graduating from Brewster Academy that I had to take an internship in Abu Dhabi Stock Market to get educated from the masters. I spent two weeks at ADX and 7 hours a day, It was not enough, but I got a lot of information, and all of my questions were answered. I went through all sectors HR, Clearing, Settlement, Depository & Registry, Market Operations & Surveillance, and Listed Companies Affairs. I was interested in the MOS market operations and surveillance because it is the heart of the stock market and it is all the work behind the scene. The MOS’s job is to secure the market exchange from stock playing and broker’s problem. It’s also the sector that gets other companies to Abu Dhabi Stock Market. I thought ADX would be the same as the New York stock exchange where they will have the same features, but because ADX started in 2000, it is still small compared to NYSE. The takeout’s from my experience in ADX is that I can discuss stock exchange in detail, and I have an overview of every sector in a stock market. ADX is vital for Abu Dhabi and the UAE because every stock market reflects the economy of the country.
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