Congratulations to all our students who graduated on November 14 and 15. Honorary degrees were given to Iain MacRitchie, Chairman & CEO of MCR Holdings, and Derek Feeley, Executive Vice President of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement.
Amongst the students graduating was Shaikha Mashael Al Khalifa, CEO of Neovartis, our Bahrain centre partner, and all those graduating had a good reason to be celebrating but for one family there were three good reasons as the November 15 graduation saw three sisters from Abu Dhabi graduating together at the same ceremony.
Rita, Karmen and Manal Naim all undertook the Strathclyde MBA programme at the same time at Strathclyde Business School's international centre in Abu Dhabi and have now graduated together with their Masters in Business Administration.
The Naims travelled to Glasgow this month for their triple graduation, but their Strathclyde story began at the Abu Dhabi campus where, a few years ago, Manal planted the idea of all three enrolling together.
Rita, Karmen, and Manal had followed independently successful career paths in industries of administration, oil and gas, and information technology, respectively, and shared similarly ambitious goals for professional development and entrepreneurship in the future. With encouragement from their managers and one another to pursue MBAs, the Naim sisters undertook extensive research on their business school options in Abu Dhabi, ultimately agreeing on their initial selection of Strathclyde due to its location, local and international accreditations, reputation, quality of education, flexibility and affordability. So it was that in 2011, the Naims began their separate yet intertwined MBA journeys.
"It was a great advantage," Rita said of the benefits to concurrently working towards their degrees. "We were studying together most of the time," she explained, "and doing the group assignments together whenever applicable."
"It was always nice working together," Manal continued, "but we also found that working with other students gave us the chance to know other students from various backgrounds and cultures, and to learn from them."
"There was more cooperation than competition," Karmen added, "even when we were assigned to different groups. We encouraged each other to study."
Inspired by the Strategy Analysis & Evaluation course of the MBA, the Naim sisters decided to do their final project together studying the professional services department of an information technology company, analysing its strategy, and making recommendations for business development.
Meanwhile, the Naim sisters report that they have already found themselves applying concepts and tools learned during the MBA in their current roles, which are quite diverse: Rita works in one of the main Government entities of Abu Dhabi emirate, the Statistics Center – Abu Dhabi; Karmen is a Planning Officer at National Drilling Co.; and Manal is a Senior Software Consultant for MDS Computers, Midis Group.
Outside their shared experiences in the Strathclyde MBA over the past two years, Rita, Karmen, and Manal have been and will continue to be focused on those independent roles and careers. Yet in the long term, they each share an entrepreneurial drive and see themselves running their own business in years to come.