A young Saudi Arabian man, still only 25 years old, I was born into a privileged family, and this is the primary reason I serve as a board member of one of the largest real estate companies in Saudi Arabia, because it is our family business. My father wants very much to start a partner financial company and he is waiting for me to come back from the USA with a master's in finance degree to be able to start our financial company. Despite my privileged background, however, I also come from a very hard-working family that I feel deserves the success that it has achieved. I completed my bachelor's degree in business management with a special concentration in Finance at King Saud University here in Saudi Arabia. In addition to studying, I have also worked alongside and in support of my father for the last 7 years, building, running, and streamlining our real estate investment company.
We also work extremely hard as a family doing volunteer work, feeding those who fast all day during Ramadan, for example, after sundown every day for a month. I have always worked ridiculously hard both at my studies and in our family business and volunteer efforts. This arduous work was rewarded early on, at 13 years old, for example, when I was invited to sit for a special exam by the King Abdulaziz Foundation for Giftedness and Creativity, because of my advanced math skills.
I do not consider myself to be a materialistic or greedy person. In fact, I like to think of the career that I am building in finance as a public service, a vocation, and myself as someone who works extremely hard to serve the public good, community development, as well as the personal advancement of the clients of our company.
My outlook towards Finance is accurately summed up by my deep admiration for the Bangladeshi Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank who jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize for their contributions to humanity and world peace in the areas of microcredit and microfinance. As someone who lives in the Middle East, an increasingly troubled and unstable part of the world, I see microfinance to build peace through prosperity for all.
I want to become recognized in the long term as an expert in my country in international finance. I like to think of myself as a global citizen and I love to travel and learn about new cultures. In addition to the USA, I have spent significant periods of time in Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, and the U.A.E. Furthermore, I have also had to opportunity to get to know many people from the Western world professionally, working in a variety of areas of our family real estate business, including marketing as well as finance.
My long-term goals in finance include doing everything that I can to offer real estate investment opportunities to people who have modest incomes to provide them with greater levels of financial security. Some level of finance should be made available to all citizens for home ownership as an entitlement in advanced civilizations. While I support the International Monetary Fund’s general advice given to Arab countries to reduce or dismantling tariffs and widen the scope of liberalization and de-regulation—we need to do this in such a way as to protect the more vulnerable members of our societies. I question whether sustainable economic progress can be achieved based on a blind pursuit of foreign investment for the Arab region, since it often does little or nothing to stimulate either employment or working-class home ownership. I dream of being an international mover and shaker in finance whose efforts help to generate employment, redress inequalities and wage depression in ways that are not only more consistent with human rights, but also stimulate economic recovery.
Thank you for considering my application to our distinguished program.
Master's in Finance Personal Statement Saudi Business Vision
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