Please describe your professional goals, your past and present experiences as they related to these goals, and the importance of graduate business study at this point in your career.
I have always had a great passion to become involved in the business world, and this has determined my educational path over the last four years. My main goal is to establish my own real estate firm in Saudi Arabia and bring a higher standard of knowledge and education to this field in my country. It will no longer be a business activity that is just based on personal experience as it generally has been in the past.
I have already completed my degree in finance at King Saud University so I am now prepared to take the next step and obtain an international standard of knowledge in this area with an MSRE degree from the University of San Diego. In the College of Business Administration at King Saud University, my favorite classes were those in finance. In addition to my theoretical education, I also gained practical experience by working with my father, who was a partner in KPMG. I accompanied him to his meetings with other corporations and businesspeople, and observed their discussions in a wide variety of business fields. These experiences gave me a great deal of information about the contemporary business environment in Saudi Arabia.
At the beginning of my junior year, I became a trainee at the Century 21 real estate company, from which I gained experience working with a global business and expanded my knowledge of the real estate market in Riyadh. While the oil industry is of course the largest in Saudi Arabia, few people realize the real estate is second, and that this business has been growing very rapidly in recent years, especially because the government is expanding its programs to provide affordable housing to all citizens in the country. King Abdullah announced a plan to spend $67 billion for the construction of 500,000 new residential units, which is only the first phase, and there will be far more business opportunities in the future.
In Saudi Arabia, there is going to be a major expansion in capital investment in all types of real estate in the years ahead. Many investors have switched their funds from the stock market to lower-risk opportunities in real estate, including land, office buildings, housing developments, apartments, retail centers and the tourism and hospitality sector. In the future, there will be a major demand for people and companies with an expertise in real estate appraisal and evaluation, research and evaluation, property management and rental and leasing services. I am eager and enthusiastic to get in on the ground floor of all these new developments, and a master’s degree from the Burnham-Moores Center for Real Estate at University of San Diego will prove to my future clients that I possess the professional knowledge to meet all their business needs.
I admit that I am a very ambitious person and am aware of many business and professional opportunities for success that will be available to real estate specialists in Saudi Arabia in the years ahead. I want to ensure that I will be fully equipped to enter the business world that will give me every possible advantage in obtaining clients. Real estate has always been a very competitive industry, so I already know that I need to be as prepared as possible in order to advance in the field. There are few companies in Saudi Arabia who will have people with the same level of training that I can obtain at USD, so a degree from there will increase my value as a real estate professional. I am also looking forward to working with a diverse student body and meeting students from a variety of nationalities, as well as working with highly knowledgeable professors and real estate case studies, all of which will be very beneficial to me in achieving my long-term goals.
