Doha’s Business Community Mentors Georgetown Students for the “Enterprise Challenge Qatar 2013”

Georgetown University Qatar (GU-Q) recently concluded an on-campus workshop, where mentors from the local business community trained GU-Q students who were taking part in the “Enterprise Challenge Qatar 2013”, a competition sponsored by Qatar Shell and the Bedaya Centre for Entrepreneurship and Career Development, to promote strategic thinking and business skills in young people.

Mentors Tarek Magdy and Mufeed Ahmed, who volunteered through the Bedaya Center, presented a training module at the workshop that was developed by the competition sponsors, and prepared teams of 2-4 students to take an online business and ethics assessment and play an online business simulation game, for points. GU-Q had a total of 20 students sign up for the competition, which was open to both high school and university level students in Qatar, an increase over last year’s three participants.

“We are excited that 20 Georgetown students split into six teams competed in the first round,” said Sandy Kim, Career Services Manager at GU-Q, and the main coordinator for this year’s competition entry. “This high level of interest in entrepreneurship is indicative of the rising number of our students entering the business world after graduation in fields such as management consulting, business development, public relations, communications, and oil and gas.”

For GU-Q student Sarim Zia, a senior majoring in International Economics, the chance to interact with members of Qatar’s local business community came at just the right time in his academic career. “The opportunity for me to apply four years of business education and financial skills in this simulation, and to work with people who have already accrued a lot of experience, was very good practice to have so close to my own entry into the working world,” said Sarim, who has plans of going into business after graduating from Georgetown.

“The GU-Q students were very interested in connecting their areas of study with the business practices in the region,” said mentor Mufeed Ahmed who spearheads a full-service design, marketing, and production company in Qatar, as well as serving as the Strategic Partnerships Manager with Doha TweetUps, an online group that regularly hosts offline events that bring together members of the diverse local community for social networking opportunities. “They really focused on the factors that affect the choices between sustainable and non-sustainable businesses, and how business ethics can make major changes in tackling growing concerns about the challenges facing the issue of migrant labor.”

Explaining his reasons for volunteering, Tarek Magdy said, “I have a passion for mentoring. I wasn’t lucky enough to have had access to it, and I think this program is training young people for the future-towards sustainable economies based on small and medium business.” Tarek is the CEO and founder of Intellect Talent Development Hub in Qatar, prior to which, he was with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) based in Qatar, where he was recognized as a regional trainer and a subject matter expert of organizational transformation and business process improvement.

The winners of the competition, AL Zubarah Boys School, won tablets and smartphones equipped with applications and business simulation software to encourage their entrepreneurial skills even further.