Every quarter I have the opportunity to help plan and attend a local community coffee lounge organized by the Willowdale Jamatkhana in Toronto. The purpose of these “lounges” are to inspire young professionals to want to strive towards excellence in their careers while also inspiring them to look overseas for service opportunities.
This quarter’s speaker was former Rogers CEO, Nadir Mohamed.
Nadir spoke for about 25 minutes but stuck around for well over an hour more answering questions and talking to young Ismaili professionals.
Here are a few points which I remember from this past weekend’s event:
– Nadir does not consider his story to be a rags to riches one. He feels he led a charmed life and has been blessed with luck as his parents struggled to provide him with all the best things in life.
– Strongly advocates that his time volunteering with the Vancouver Ismaili community provided him with a foundation based on values.
– Has never considered himself to be the smartest in the room. but was smart enough to always look for the smartest person.
– In order to make changes that might seem tough (personally or for the company) they must be simple to understand.
– Nadir also shared some “inside baseball” stories on how Rogers entered the wireless industry, purchased Microcell and even snapped the NHL away from the CBC. However, these stories are better told than read as I don’t want to mis-interpret anything he said. 🙂
