FinPod

Meeyeon (00:13)
Hi, everyone, and welcome to another edition of CFI's Careers in Finance podcast. Today, I am joined here by none other than Ahmed.

Aboushady and he joins me from a place that I'm very familiar with, Toronto, Ontario, but it seems like he's a very global citizen. I know that you've gone working from places like in LA to the UK, to Toronto, and I'm so excited to hear about that. But first, I just want to welcome you and thank you for joining me on the podcast.

Ahmed Aboushady (00:45)
Thank you, thank you, and thanks for having me. Appreciate that. Thank you so much.

Meeyeon (00:51)
And so the first thing I looked at when I found you on our kind of like LinkedIn presence I was going through and the way that you stood out was you have a big career in risk. And one of the things that I first noticed was that you're such a global citizen, like I said. I think you started your career in LA and actually, no, you did your education in Cairo, right? Is it?

and then you've been various different places. But with your career, I think we just have a learner base that would love and be thrilled to learn from you about your career. And so I wanted to ask you, and we could kind of do this in whichever way you like. Sometimes people like to say, you know, where they are today, and then we could dial it all back and see where it all started. Or would you like to start off with like kind of the origin story? Like, where did you start?

Did you study finance in school? Were you always interested in it? And then fill us in to where you are today.

Ahmed Aboushady (01:58)
I would prefer to start with how everything started, the old story, where it began.

Meeyeon (02:03)
Yeah, okay,

so take us back to the beginning.

Ahmed Aboushady (02:07)
Yes, so I,

I graduated from a well-known university in Egypt and I didn't want to study accounting but because my dad was an engineer so I always inspired the engineers work and how they do because I'm pretty good in math and I would like to... it was a dream for me to be an engineer but because of my grades I didn't, I didn't make it so I did end up in accounting.

And I always believe in mentorship and asking people ahead of you, what is the best route? What is the best way moving forward? What did you learn from your mistakes? So I have been advised by a couple of mentors, I would say, to pursue CPA, the American CPA, which was...

Meeyeon (03:06)
And

that's not an easy route either. My husband is also an engineer. He did mechanical engineering. He did an undergrad as well as masters. But the rigor that's there, that academic rigor, the amount of studying, especially to do your professional engineering designation, is not very different from the CPA. The CPA is tough.

Ahmed Aboushady (03:27)
It is and one of the additional layers of difficulty as well. The exam was in the US and they had to apply for a visa to get there and it's a longer process. So I did sign up for, there was, and still there, there is a course of provider called Becker, Becker CPA. They were very good at them. They were leading in the CPA testing prep.

And we had something called a crash course. Crash course you study for four months in class. So I signed up for that. I got my visa. I studied in UCLA for four months in class. I did the exam and then I got lucky because PwC were hiring and there was an in-campus recruitment. My type of visa was allowing me to work in there, which was good. So I started my career with PwC.

in Audit and Assurance that was in Los Angeles, California. And actually it was interesting as well because socks was new, was pretty new back then. The wallet came out of Arthur Anderson and Enron and the socks was invented that came to a place where the servants' oxley, it's a new thing and you need to apply it. So I did learn from pretty good firm and because everything was new.

at this point. So they spent lots of time educating the team how to do certain stuff. And back in the day, we were privileged, I would say, because we used to, PwC, EY, and all the big four, they used to hire people from scratch with no knowledge and teaching them. We will teach you what to do. We will let you know how to do Rx, how to do RISC, how to do all these kinds of

which was really great, so I loved it because by nature, I'm a person who likes to think, how can we make things better? What we are looking at, what could go wrong and how can we make it better? So this is the idea about the SOX controls, which is looking at a process from A to Z and how to make it better and if it does work in an efficient and the design is efficient and it is effective.

This is where started and I stayed with PwC for almost four years and I moved from audit and assurance to performance improvement, which is more of leaning into internal audit and risk and fraud as well, how to detect and look into fraud and these different aspects of it. Unfortunately, it came to an end, the honeymoon, because I was on a visa and when the economic crunch hits,

I had no place legally to stay because the firm thought about having a cutting cost a little bit because the visa and the sponsorship, the green card, all this stuff, it's a big cost item. Because I don't give up and I always believe in doing what I wanna do, and I moved to the UK on a student visa.

Meeyeon (06:28)
Yeah.

Ahmed Aboushady (06:47)
The IFRS in 2007, the IFRS was booming. It was trying to catch up with US GAAP and get that global. So I signed up with the ECCA in the UK as a student. I got the diploma in IFRS. I ended up with EY. My role at EY was amazing because it did involve more of...

Meeyeon (06:54)
Yeah.

Ahmed Aboushady (07:13)
mergers acquisition and kind of valuation where the good things I like to think about it's but if you if I didn't have that background about the financial statements and how to audit it and how to is not is not only crunching numbers it's way more than that so it gives me the ability to look into the valuation the financial modeling and that that route which I like the lot because

Again, it's more about thinking. I like to think, I like to advise my client on how to do things better, how to look into better ways in doing things. And this is what drives me for success, that kind of...

chain of thoughts basically.

Meeyeon (07:57)
And it seems like

you found something that you were... So one of the things I find is that sometimes, especially early on in a career, it's difficult to know... Well, there are people that are born with a talent, a gift, for example. Let's say like Adele. She clearly has a great gift. She has an amazing voice and she's been able to make a career out of it. And in that way, it sounds simple. Of course, it's more difficult.

But there's very few people where it's just like, so clear what your talent is from day one and you're like, I want to do that. And for me, it's like, it's kind of the same thing. I wouldn't say I'm particularly talented at anything, but when I was in school, I went through kind of the traditional route of getting an interest in finance, going into investment banking, and then so on and so forth. But in the beginning stages, it's hard to say, you know, like I'm passionate about finance or like, I really like this.

unless you give it some time, because until you get really good at something, I find that it's very difficult to say you're passionate about it, because when you're learning it and it's challenging and it's stressing you out, at that point you're just like, God, this is such a pain, but you know, I'm blessed to be able to do this. But was it the same for you, I wonder, when you started going into accounting, going from having an interest in engineering and then going into accounting? Did you know kind of from the onset you were interested in learning about

for example, internal risk, internal audit, and then going into the SOX route, or did you kind of let it come to you?

Ahmed Aboushady (09:30)
It's no, to me it's because I read a lot of articles. I keep myself updated with the trends and the techniques and what's going on. What's the hot topic on the market at the moment. The incident of Enron and Arthur Anderson, it really changed the way I think about things. And I wanted to, I had a passion for finance, but I didn't like the idea that something could go wrong.

can make a whole institution collapse. So that's what was my passion behind. Let me get in there and see if I can change anything. I can serve the clients better. I can do anything to make things more in the right path. So this is how I try to look at things. And basically, every few years, I take a step back and assess where I am, what I need, because I believe as well in...

The more you learn, the more you understand, the more you know, the more you have more prospects about things and how to look outside the box and how to look for solutions, how to touch points no one was able to think about before. So this is normally my approach in everything basically, even in my personal life I do the same thing.

Meeyeon (10:54)
It's kind of like the if you know better, you'll do better. And if you want to do better, you just have to learn and absorb as much as you can around you, even from like the most mundane things that you might do.

Ahmed Aboushady (11:01)
Is there?

Yeah. Yeah, I would say so. Yeah.

Meeyeon (11:08)
And then, so how did you enjoy your time when you were in the UK? You said at EY?

Ahmed Aboushady (11:13)
Yeah, EY was, yeah. EY was, it's okay.

Meeyeon (11:16)
And so how was that role? Was it very different from what you did at PWC? What was the day-to-day like?

Ahmed Aboushady (11:24)
Yeah, because it was, I had a of rules with EY, are different ones, but the first one with

the valuation and the mergers and acquisitions. It's typically the same investment banking day to day, we are, in investment banking, you start the deal from the start to finish, till the last pitch of it. In the M&A or in the valuation aspect of it, we are looking at certain, maybe a pricing model, a price allocation, due diligence about certain things, carve out.

some of the businesses they don't want to have that part anymore. So we assess it to make sure it's properly valued. So if they want to sell it or just acquired by somebody else, looking into that. Having the accounting background and having the risk perspective and the fraud as well, it makes me stand out when it came to finalizing these projects because I wasn't only looking from a financial perspective.

or a due diligence perspective. I have the other things in mind to look at, which I was able to provide very valuable advice to our clients basically, because I can look in a more holistic approach and look deeper into a little bit of details. So this...

Meeyeon (12:50)
Okay, because

in your role you were advising the buy side client, right? Okay. It's interesting you say the word carve out because the only context that I'm used to hearing it in is so I worked in DCM origination and when we say like carve out it would be when one of our clients would come and say like they need they have funding requirements of X million dollars and they're looking to do like a private placement.

Ahmed Aboushady (12:53)
Yeah, yeah, that was yeah.

Meeyeon (13:18)
And so that's the only way that I'm actually used to hearing the word carve out. So, but in your context, it's very different. Would you be able to talk to me a little bit about what a carve out means from the EY kind of auditor perspective?

Ahmed Aboushady (13:18)
Mm.

For example, if we are talking about Loblaws, for example, it's Loblaws. For example, they decided to sell their bread because they have a company sell bread and the manufacturer put it under umbrella of Loblaw. All of a sudden they said, you know what, this business is not profitable for us anymore. We want to sell it out. But it's part of Loblaw. It's part of the hundred million dollars, whatever. Just let me make that up.

Meeyeon (13:35)
lob loss.

Mm-hmm.

Ahmed Aboushady (13:59)
hundred million dollars which worth of the company. So how much we should value this? So we look at the operation itself, we look at the assets in there and how much money was generated based on only the bread. And then we can say out of the hundred million, this worth 80 million, this worth 20 million. If you wanna sell it out, it should be worth that much. So this is actually the carve out. are valuing.

You are evaluating one aspect of the business, but of course related to the overall.

Meeyeon (14:31)
yeah, okay, so like just evaluating the divestiture. okay, interesting. And then you've had a couple of, I don't wanna say like changes in your career, because I think you've kind of squarely remained in the risk aspect, but then what are the next steps that you've taken? Because you've had a couple of roles since then, you've had a really wide ranging career. Tell us about like your next few roles, and then I would love to hear about what your favorite.

Ahmed Aboushady (14:34)
Yeah. Yeah.

Meeyeon (14:58)
role has been so far and why.

Ahmed Aboushady (15:02)
Well, the next one is very interesting because I moved from that one to, as I mentioned, they have an idea about the anti-money laundering and I'm certified for the examiner and the world of sanctions and all that as well. Something always I kept my eyes on looking to get into as well. There was an opportunity with

one of the big banks in the UK to revisit their AML policies and their KYC. KYC is know your customer basically, which is it's the first step in opening an account or having some investments and stuff like that. From a risk perspective, so let us have a risk-based approach and look if the investments, the insurance products we are selling, all the

the products offered by the bank from a risk perspective is risky and how that risk can affect the anti-monolingual and how can we make this process more stringent. And because some of the Arabic ability I have, the Arabic language, some of the clients were

there was a big base of clientele in that language, they speak Arabic as well, so it needed someone to look at some documents and some stuff like that. that was very interesting project I had as well. And it did involve lots of back and forth because not everyone can come with the same conclusion, especially when, if you are talking from a rescue perspective and you have someone from the business,

They know how to do things from the business operation very well, but when you are talking about risk and how to put things from a perspective of a regulator, for example, some people think of this as an extra burden for them or extra work. There was another aspect of it of an education background, have to let people know why we are doing this and we had to train them on certain aspects of it.

And yeah, this is that led me to back to EY where I joined FIDS. FIDS is fraud investigation and dispute services, which is really interesting as well because you have the audit, you have the risk, you have the fraud, but in the audit world, we are working on a sample basis. Even if we are doing financial modeling, even if we are doing anything, you are picking a sample and then try to extrapolate on a whole population.

So when it comes to ORED, we only giving reasonable assurance. only giving, it's not absolute. So maybe we have tested a sample has no issues or no errors or nothing wrong there. That's why we are looking into the fraud aspect of maybe the financial statement is understatement of revenues or overstatement of expenses and our sample is clean and no one noticed. That's why most of the

big audit firms or the audit firm in general they end up in in subpoenas and courts and stuff because the approach they are auditing which is it's understandable so this is

That was the end of, I think, 2018. then I, in between all that, I have been doing, involved with FRM and CFA and I'm doing MBA as well. it's, yeah. So, you know, one level here, I pass it, then I jump to something else, then, you know, it keeps going back and forth. That's why I...

Meeyeon (18:49)
my gosh, you're very busy.

I'm interested to know when, sorry, keep going, sorry.

Ahmed Aboushady (19:04)
Good.

Meeyeon (19:05)
I'm interested to know where you were in your career when the global financial crisis was and what your thoughts are from that perspective. Because as you said, you don't like to be in a place. so for example, when we had the global financial crisis

Ahmed Aboushady (19:13)
2007.

Meeyeon (19:22)
I'd love to know your take on kind of Bear Stearns, Solomon Brothers, because you were alluding to earlier about financial institutions and the processes that they have. And if they go belly up, then how can that be improved? And so like that speaks to the socks portion of it.

Ahmed Aboushady (19:42)
We are talking about the 2007 financial crisis. I was in the US, that's where I was about to. I started my career back then about four years and then when it was about to, that was the transition period between living in LA and moving to the UK, where the visa thing I told you about. There is a big market for improvement because I believe that

Meeyeon (19:44)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

to the UK.

Ahmed Aboushady (20:09)
The financial institutions and the investment banks and the insurance companies, all those big players in the market, they are looking more... There is an aspect of keeping the shareholders happy, I would say, which is... I'm not against, but to an extent. Because if you are... There is a concept in finance or accounting, how to get the best... Maximize the return over a dollar.

whether private or public, this is a concept in there. But sometimes you have to cut on certain functions. When any bank in financial distress or any financial institution on financial distress, they are looking into cutting compliance and internal audit and those because the way they are labeling these people as a cost center, you know.

Meeyeon (21:06)
Yeah.

Ahmed Aboushady (21:07)
Which is, which is to me is completely wrong. Building a robust controls environment, start with that. You have to get the processes right and cascading down to the mini very minimal controls on a day to day basis. So this is actually what happened when, companies look focused mainly on maximizing the profits and the starting, cutting costs about these important functions. It's.

This is the world we live in. And we recently heard about some financial institutions have been sanctioned in US $3 billion or even more because that those level of defense wasn't there. So if you have to keep the risk in there, you have to keep the audit, you have to keep AML and you have to do as well what's right for the shareholders, but they don't have to earn 300 % on a dollar. I wouldn't say I wouldn't recommend that. You know what I mean?

Meeyeon (22:02)
Haha

Ahmed Aboushady (22:05)
So this is where I am and I'm a big believer in the other misconception about the audit or risk or fraud or anything like that around those lines is still the policing approach is there. People look at the auditor as someone who jump in to catch mistakes and do no, it's not like that. The good thing about auditors, auditors they are

They learn quicker than anyone because you are getting involved with money laundry, operations, financial modeling. You know about the investments. You know about how the products are developed. You deal with actuaries and you know what they are doing in building that model. So in five years' span, if you are looking at the knowledge you have as an auditor, it's amazing. So when you give someone an advice, it's basically because you have seen a lot.

And this is what I believe in because that's why I'm trying to expand my knowledge every now and then. So I started from accounting, I did the fraud thing, I did risk management, I'm doing FRM and now an executive MBA. So I'm trying to tick all the boxes because they say if you are a CEO, you need to know a little about everything and this is my plan. So hopefully I'll be a CEO within the coming five years or so.

Meeyeon (23:26)
Oh, I'm love it. You're putting it out there into the universe.

You're gonna manifest it. So with risk management, usually like, there's a couple of different paths that people can take. And you've explored quite a few. And what is the current kind of market for people looking for careers in risk management today? Do you find that it's very clear cut and segmented into different fields that people can go into? So for example, like ESG risk management,

Ahmed Aboushady (23:37)
Mm-hmm.

Meeyeon (23:55)
or something that would have kind of been created by, you know, Basel III, are there very specific fields that people can start specializing into, you'd say?

Ahmed Aboushady (24:07)
I would say it all depends on the person because they are completely different. There is an FRM, is financial risk management, and there is ASG. There is one for Basel, as you mentioned. There are completely different structure and different ways to assess risk. And even now, regardless of this, have another geopolitical risk going on. If a war happening somewhere in the universe, it's going to affect our stock market.

Meeyeon (24:12)
Mm-hmm.

Ahmed Aboushady (24:37)
So you need to expand your horizon a little bit. wouldn't limit it to one. And crypto, for example, in the next five to 10 years, I'm assuming everything will be digitalized and digital currency will be dominating. Are we ready for this? If anyone want to get into, if a new graduate at the moment, they should be looking ahead into the cryptocurrency and how to audit it, how to make money laundry.

rules for it. Is it traceable? Is it untraceable? How can we manage the risks? How can we... Because there is an aspect as well of the anti-finance terrorism. If we go that route, it's going to be untraceable. So the world should start looking at these from a risk perspective and try to find solutions for it. And this is one of the initiatives I'm working on at the moment.

Having a unified AML policy for cryptocurrency and what could be the risks associated with it, considering the huge expansion and the huge turnover, it's really expanding a lot.

Meeyeon (25:52)
And it seems like you probably, as you've mentioned earlier, you're a big fan of mentorship and learning from those that have come before you, those that are around you, and just being able to take knowledge from as many people and learn from as many people as you can. In the years that you have been able to mentor people, have you found that there are kind of common skill sets or personality traits that make someone particularly

successful in a career in risk management.

Ahmed Aboushady (26:26)
I would say two things I have seen across the board. People I mentored, they were persistent, they don't give up no matter what happened, and they were eager to learn, eager to listen. They listen more than they speak. Those three things I would say, it will define any career, especially a risk because...

You need to be a good listener to understand what the risk really is, where it lies and how can you. Because when you deal with risk, have four, at the end of the day you have.

four options, either to treat the risk or transfer the risk or tolerate the risk or terminate the risk. And each one is costly. Each option is going to cost some money. So if you don't get all the data, the information you need, and you are not persistent enough because it could be seven, eight, 15 meetings actually to get that, you know, to get the full picture.

And you have to read because if it's involving actuaries, involving some other specialties, engineers we deal with, some other specialties within that risk, you will never be able to get the right picture and you will never be to recommend the right thing to do. Because at the end of the day, every risk is money. It's finance, it's accounting. It is...

Will you tolerate this? You're going to pay one million. You're going to transfer it. You're going to pay insurance two million. You're going to treat it. You have to hire people and it's going to cost you three million. So which option is the best? So these are the qualities I would say have seen common between the people I have mentored.

Meeyeon (28:24)
And what do you do today? Tell us about your role today, what your kind of day-to-day is like, and take us through a day in the life of OMS.

Ahmed Aboushady (28:34)
Well, now I'm working on with.

OSC, which is Ontario Securities Commission. Yeah. And the role is there is it's very different because we are looking at our ICFR, is in internal control over financial reporting. But it's not only that, because we are looking into derivatives, for example, because when you have, you know, as a regulator, we said some

Meeyeon (28:43)
Security Commission.

Ahmed Aboushady (29:11)
fees for that.

for the capital market participants, when it comes, for example, to notional amounts, we have to get that right to get some percentage on the notional amounts of derivatives has been traded within a year by X bank. So we develop those policies as well. And I can go on a bank and it to make sure that this is, we have paid the right amount.

as well, it's more of some of it FP&A some of it dealing with the risks as it happens. Some stuff we do on the tribunal because we have a whistleblower policy line, sorry, whistleblower, yeah, land line, I'm sorry. So this is where people can give us a tip about one of the...

investment companies they have done something wrong to them and we have to investigate and look into what could what we could do to help those people actually the consumers one other thing is i'm sure you know osc and FISRA are the same

under the same, they are both arms under Ministry of Finance, but one looking at the capital markets and which is OSC FISRA is looking at the...

financial planner, financial advisor title and how can you get that through accredited organizations and all that. So I did work at FISRA before ASC and now we are working on that project. If we have a tribunal and we said Ahmed Investment Company will be banned from trading, that should be crossed over to FISRA because some of these financial planner, financial advisors have been involved in such activity.

So this is kind of a project we are working on right now, which is, it's interesting. It's really interesting.

Meeyeon (31:26)
So if you were to kind of walk me through like, let's say the like a nine to five Monday, how does your day start? What do do during the day? And what are your projects like? As much as you can disclose.

Ahmed Aboushady (31:39)
yeah. normally Monday we have, we have a status update meeting on Mondays normally because we want to check what happened last week on certain project. So this is how it starts. starts with that. And, normally we come out of this with some, to-do list. So normally this is the next thing we do. And, Mondays as well, I have one-to-one with my team.

to check if there is any obstacles, anything holding them back from finishing the task on hand. And there will be...

A phone call with Ministry of Finance about certain updates as well during the day and

Going through the day dealing with the stackholders in general, keeping them apprised with what we are doing and if there is anything we should be aware of, anything that's holding the team from completing their work. Sometimes I provide training when it comes to emerging risks and stuff like that. And I always communicate with the stackholders.

about some risks and what is going to happen. For example, we are expecting the Bank of Canada to raise interest now we are debating about it. Next one is going to be is going to be we are debating about it. yeah, so this is this is a typical day where we are discussing these amazing stuff with the the economists with with the other.

Meeyeon (33:27)
And I'd love to hear if you're reflecting on your career so far. think getting to know you right now, I feel like I can kind of anticipate what your answer is, but do you have any things that you wish you could have done differently? What are some major learning points that you think you could share with our learners and give anecdotes for? Because what I like to kind of think of this conversation with as is,

Ahmed Aboushady (33:39)
Okay.

Meeyeon (33:54)
I think all of the CFI podcasts, especially our careers and finance ones, I see it as the most accessible coffee chat. Like coffee chat that is available to you whether you live in a major metropolitan city like New York, Toronto or London, or if you're in like a teeny tiny suburb of somewhere in the middle of middle America in Chicago, Illinois. For everyone that's listening, do you?

What are some things that you'd like to share, like lessons learned from your career that you think were really impactful to you?

Ahmed Aboushady (34:28)
I would say I would have started looking into them.

FRM, CFA, the valuable courses of CFI and all that earlier in my career. I wouldn't have done it now. I would have done it a bit early between maybe the move during my time in the UK. I would say this was the perfect time to do these things because I would have been now because as I mentioned, my each goal is different, but my goal is to be a CEO and I want to learn.

few bits and pieces about almost everything when it comes to operation, marketing, data, analytics, everything. So it would have been a shortcut, I would say by now, because you know when you move from a country to the other, you take a step back because you need to rebuild your brand and get to know some connections and all that. So this is the only thing I would have done.

Or I wouldn't have left in the US I would say because it I would have been a partner now at BWC but So those are the only two things I would have done differently but that for them for the most part I would have done the same thing again and again because it's a learning curve, it's a learning process and I would say take one step at a time. Just learn one thing and then move to the other and every five

years five to six years have a pause and see what you need because priorities are getting different now we are talking about for example earlier i did touch on the cryptocurrency it will be a necessity in two years so what after two years we should look at what's next after that so yeah i would have started cfa earlier this is what i would have said

Meeyeon (36:23)
Goodness, and.

Ahmed Aboushady (36:23)
Because it's really difficult

to do it around 47, so it's pretty tough. Pretty tough to study now.

Meeyeon (36:29)
I know like their life has so many demands, right? And then you have your family on top of everything. So it's so hard to balance.

Ahmed Aboushady (36:34)
Yeah.

Yeah. And the executive MBA as well, it's very demanding. We have a capstone project. have always, have teams, we have the project in teams. it's different. And we are encouraged to deal with different colleagues at each time. So different, different time zones. We have been talking to one of my colleagues in Singapore.

When it was 8 or 9 am here, it was like 12 am his time. So we have to get all these in order and get it done. it's a bit much, but I will get there, I think.

Meeyeon (37:15)
Then last question for you, because I'm so curious. You're a planner and you have a five-year plan. We've said that you want to be a CEO. You put it out there. And I believe when you put something out in the universe, you can make it happen. What is your goal with your EMBA? Why did you decide to do it now in your career? And what do you plan? What do you hope to get out of it? Because it's a big investment, time and money-wise.

Ahmed Aboushady (37:26)
Anyway.

when

Yeah, the EMBA is literally, it teach you how the executives think. If you are looking at, if you are a CFO or a CEO, you are looking at which strategic decision you should make, which is something I haven't, I know about risk, but operational strategic decisions, for example, I didn't do any of these before. So this is something I wanted to learn. There are lots of

study materials about if you have an idea for example for example today I have an idea about a new software for for anti-money London how to get seed funding how to make your idea moving into that direction then you are a private company then how you move to an IPO with real examples with so this is something I really want to be in to learn about and a strategy leadership it tells you

I have very diversified background. dealt with too many different people. But when you look at the diversity and inclusion from a corporate perspective is different than an owner perspective or a CEO perspective. So they are defining those thin lines between what could be done. And I was testing my ability for the capstone project as well.

Because if you have a bold idea, would you talk about it with you? So this is something maybe I was... When it comes to risk, I can talk about it, but when it comes to something it could hang your career on, it's at the end of the day, if the idea didn't work, it's something holds you back. But if you didn't bring it up to the world or speak about it, it's gonna be... No one will know about it. So this is one of the things I learned as well. Always speak up.

Don't worry about the results, which is, so I think I have now a couple of ideas either to start my own business actually, where as I mentioned, I'm looking into an AML software that will take into consideration all the issues we have in the current software and it will be looking more into.

Meeyeon (39:56)
And just for those

who might not know, AML is antimony laundering.

Ahmed Aboushady (39:59)
Okay, that's anti-money laundering and it will be looking into the sanction port as well, which is a great initiative. There's lots of demand about that. So if it wasn't for EMBA, I wouldn't have thought about that. And let me take the opportunity to thank Quantik Business and Technology School, which is our EMBA.

school, they are amazing. They have a great program, they are always supporting people and it's really good. It's really good. I'm glad I'm part of the institution. I'm really glad.

Meeyeon (40:40)
And what a way to end off our podcast. I have to say you heard it here first in five years time, Ahmed's going to come back and be a CEO. It's got to happen.

Ahmed Aboushady (40:49)
Yes,

mark my words. Mark my words, I will be.

Meeyeon (40:53)
I'm so excited to hear from you in five years. Well, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. It's been a wonderful discussion, and I'm sure that our listeners here have learned a lot and taken away from this. And yeah, I just wanted to say thank you so much. We have so much that we've learned from you, and I hope that everyone can take away some great lessons from this. So till next time, everyone, bye for now.

Ahmed Aboushady (40:55)
Yeah, would be. Thank you.

Thanks, man.

Thank you.