My Story,
My Name is Karim Raphael, 26 year old Egyptian, born in Cairo. I finished the British system high school IGCSE with a 109% final grade and joined the German University in Cairo to pursue my Bachelor’s degree in Communication and Electric Engineering and graduate in September 2009. throughout college I have joined the YWCA camps in Egypt where I did volunteer leadership work and organizing summer camps for kids and youth aging 7-12 and 13-17. the main purpose of these camps is to highlight the importance of character building and educate them to be themselves and stand out from the community they are surrounded by and not just follow the herd.
December 2009 was a special month, during which I was Head of the annual Christmas Bazaar , hosting more than 2000 guests, 10 vendors, 5 sponsors and leading 50 volunteers to help make Christmas a more cheerful event and raise funds for the YWCA. With a lot of hard work and dedication, the event raised more funds than all previous years.
In late 2009 I joined “Mobinil”, Egypt’s first mobile operator and one of the biggest in the region, serving over 30 million local customers and roamers. My job as a Projects Engineer was handling mobile payment related projects and making sure that they launch in time. This included working closely with a diverse segment and teams in the company, starting with the marketing department, customer service, technology , finance and revenue assurance. A challenging part was leading this diverse number of stakeholders to achieve an end result that would be best for our customers and their satisfaction. throughout this period I have managed to launch the “self-service terminal” payment solution pilot project with Orange group, the aim of this project was to increase sales transactions and stress on customer satisfaction and comfort.
By the end of 2012 I was promoted to be in charge of all mobile applications and BlackBerry Account. My greatest achievement at that time was the “BlackBerry 10” service and handsets launch to the market. Working long hours and facing a global launch deadline was stressful enough yet very rewarding afterwards to know that Mobinil’s offer and approach was “out of the box” as quoted by one of BlackBerry’s executives. With regards to the mobile application segment, I have launched more than 3 applications serving all mobile operating systems and resulting in more than 60,000 downloads. Following that, in January 2013, I had my Project Management Professional Certification (PMP) to add up to my career as a project manager at Mobinil.
With eyes on an MBA degree from a reputable university to boost my career into international exposure, I was preparing for my TOEFL and GMAT exams. The passion I always had to be able to assess, predict and give my opinion based on knowledge and not just a hunch about new and emerging business, especially with a dream project in mind was crucial at the time.