Scholarship / Career plan for improving my life and my community - Chevening essay [4]

the prospective time in Egypt

Returning to my home country will be the prospective time for me to hit the ground by applying and implementing what I have acquired and learned during my Chevening journey. So, upon returning home I will immediately seek for opportunities to join one of the UK-related NGOs that working on healthcare projects and supporting primary healthcare facilities in Egypt like MSF or Doctors without borders. Finding a role as a project coordinator in these NGOs will be invaluable exposure to have an international outlook and a wide scope for development. I strongly believe that working in such role, project coordinator, will be a good channel to practice what I have learned in my master degree in healthcare management through representing MSF on project issues towards local communities, authorities and their counterparts and towards UN agencies and other nongovernmental organizations in the project area while taking into account the goals, objectives, and strategy for the mission as a whole.

On the long-term side, I am planning to diversify my expertise and to take my career to another scope of handling health care issues and that by working as a healthcare management consultant and analyst at one of the tip-top and reputable healthcare consulting firm especially the UK-related ones to be still connected with the UK government mission and vision in Egypt to help provide Egyptians with access to more equitable, affordable and quality healthcare through not only NGOs but also the private sector and that will be aligned with Egypt's vision to achieve universal health coverage for an essential package of health services by 2030. Combining both experiences of working at NGOs organizations and management consulting firms will enable me in the future to get my dream come true by establishing and running my healthcare consulting firm to achieve the ultimate goal of my professional career by providing the healthcare stakeholders with the necessary tools and consulting services, and advising public and private healthcare companies, pharmaceutical organizations and government about their business plans, strategies and health policies.

In Egypt, there is a significant disparity between the wealthy and the have-nots. The private institutions mainly serve the well-off in the society, and this leaves little to no opportunities for access to these facilities. Among the reasons why these issues are adamant in the country is the lack of a governing principle seeking to bind the two sectors. This imbalance is the driving force that I have, my new mission that is to shape not only my life but the life of my country. Therefore once starting up my consulting firm, I will seek and seize all avenues to leveraging the created invaluable network at Chevening and post-study work at NGOs and corporate sector to improve the relationship between public and private health sectors, so as to improve the medical facilities available in the nation. I aim to find new innovative ways that will increase the allocation of medical services to those unable to acquire them due to their financial incapability.

Scholarship / Studying in UK is a life changing experience - Chevening Essay [4]

uk study choices

I was initially attracted to the healthcare sector especially the business aspect when first exposed to pharmaceutical marketing and promotion coursework while studying my bachelor degree in pharmacy. So, after graduation, I worked as a product specialist in the commercial division at Pfizer Company and meanwhile I got my marketing diploma in international marketing from Eslsca business school to develop my business and management skills. During my work in the healthcare field, I have identified many challenges faced by patients, ministry of health, pharma companies and healthcare delivery systems. With my strong root in the healthcare field, I will expand my field with the knowledge of healthcare management.

I chose to study MSc health management from the City University of London because City University is ranked 1st in London for health professions. In addition to this, the University provides a welcoming environment with vast opportunities such as placements, projects, internship opportunities and guest speakers who have a grasp on the future trends across the health sector. It is the school that will allow me to acquire the necessary skills and qualifications to manage the healthcare systems for I am interested in mainly learning all about health innovation, economic evolution and health management consultancy.

The second choice is MSc international health management at Imperial College business school because Imperial is a world-leading university in healthcare research and teaching. One of its core modules is entrepreneurship that will help to develop my own healthcare business opportunity into a fully-fledged pitch to investors and this will help me a lot in establishing my own healthcare management consulting firm in the future, as I am aspiring to improve society by applying innovative solutions to challenges in the healthcare sector.

My third choice is MSc healthcare operational management at Warwick University because the university has WMG (Warwick Manufacturing Group) which is one of the largest academic departments at the University of Warwick, located in the Faculty of Science. WMG currently has over 400 academic and research staff working across a wide range of sectors including healthcare and pharmaceutical, and this offers a wide and global network of contacts that will enormously support me during my work in the management consulting field, as the networking is highly important in consulting. My personal contacts and reputation can make a huge difference to my career progression.

Surely, studying at one of these top-notch institutions will provide me with on job experience, qualitative and quantitative skills that will help me to advance my career forward and take it to a new horizon in the healthcare consulting field

Scholarship / Networking has a magical impact - Chevening Essay. [2]

networking skills in my career

The core of my job as a medical product specialist is to connect effectively with the healthcare providers to educate them about our company different medications. However, the reach and access to the key doctors was so hard and at the same time they were very potential for our business and having a high influence on the other junior doctors. So, I decided to build nontraditional relationship with those key opinion leaders. And this was by engaging them in different activities such as inviting them to act as a speaker to disseminate and share their medical experiences and knowledge with the other colleagues. On top of that, I was able to build a personal relationship with them by organizing to play a regular football matches together and this helped me a lot to strengthen my network with my most potential customers. Accordingly, I was successful to engage them enormously in our day to day business and they become a loyal customer. This led to that our company products had the highest market share and I was recognized as the best achiever.

I have a great passion to always develop my skills and learning new things in my work to further my career forward. So, I decided to learn more about the marketing strategies to diversify my background between sales and marketing. I connected with the marketing manager in our company and requested from him to be my mentor to help me to learn more about marketing. He gave much more marketing responsibilities as a marketing assignment like organizing the marketing activities of our company plan of action meeting. This gave me an exceptional opportunity to network with the other marketers and taking my marketing skills to a new horizon.

My networking skills helped me also to develop my business acumen. And that was when I attended a business school alumni forum, I was keen to connect openly with those calibers and to get their contact. After the meeting, I contacted them regularly to benefit from their valuable insights and experiences about studying abroad. So, my close follow-up and staying in touch with those alumni enabled me to have a network of business consultants and advisors who are ready to support in any issues or difficulties related to my work. Besides, I got to know a Harvard business school alumnus who was running his management consulting firm and he was a business navy. So, I worked with him in different projects beside my original work to learn more about the management consulting field because I was very interested in to develop my business skills.

On top of that, the network that I will build during the program with my colleagues, college professors and the industry experts will make a huge difference to my career progression. On the other hand, I will devote my time and effort to communicate effectively with the chevening alumni through different channels to form much more wide success circles everywhere in the world.

Scholarship / Deliberate review needed for leadership and influence chevening essay question [2]

DARE TO TRY - facing challanges

Throughout my work at Pfizer, I was nominated and entrusted by the leadership team to be one of DARE TO TRY program champions to solve big challenges facing the organization. The challenge was how might we create a new medical education platform that increases Pfizer's market share with General practioners (GPs) doctors?

Unfortunately, I got a little help from my team; they felt frustrated and disappointed about this challenge. So, I decided never give up and worked on finding an inspiring and innovative solution. After focused innovation in a Dare to Try session, I was able to identify the problem with the GPs that was the lacking of medical information. Accordingly, I thought that the medical education on an interactive screen or tabletop on the surface of the GPs desk that will contain a virtual patient, who will mimic the interaction with the real one, would be a good idea to fulfill the educational needs of the doctors. Then, I shared the idea with my team and communicated with them the outcomes and the impact of the implementation of our project on the success of our company that will be a success for all of us as well. So, at the end I was successful to get them engaged and motivated once again. We worked very hard on our project and made a little amendment after getting the valuable insights of the rest of the team. Finally, on behalf of my team I presented the idea in front of the management team and they got impressed of the idea and adopted it and we awarded the best in practice idea in Dare to Try program at Pfizer.

Another example of my leadership and influencing experience was that when I volunteered with INJAZ Egypt (NGO) in partnership with the united nation, in a program called It is My Business (Entrepreneurship Program), to target the second preparatory students in different schools. My role in this program was to cultivate the entrepreneurship concepts in the students' minds. However, I faced a lot of challenges during the class sessions such as; lacking of resources and the large numbers of the pupils in the class that made distraction and less focus. So, I thought how to manage these difficulties and get those young people engaged with me in the class. I found that the idea of telling them the interesting stories of real successful entrepreneurs would be a good solution. In fact, they like it so much and become very interested and curious to learn more about the lives of entrepreneurs. Therefore, this approach helped me a lot to communicate effectively with them by identifying businesses they can start on their own and examine ways to apply the entrepreneurial characteristics to develop their own business plans.

So, by getting the chance to take part in this scholarship, I get to make a difference in this world. The country gets to take a progressive step towards the future.