Innovation A simple ten letter word that has always been a driving factor in this small town young

man's life. Achieving perfect scores in elementary school was hardly enough for me, and thus doing a lot of extracurricular activities was something I loved doing, it was always fun and challenging, from leading the school's debate team, the school's radio, and writing in the school's journal the latter leading to my name and picture appearing in an article in an international magazine at the age of nine, it all contributed in making my primary school years fun, memorable and immensely fulfilling. It also contributed to me being awarded the student of the year award for the academic year 1999-2000 and a week long, all expenses paid trip to Cairo. But my inner thirst for achievement had yet to be quenched, I was the sort of child who would take his old toys apart and put them back together just to see how they work, I was also the sort of child that would every now and then create (or sometimes try to) some intricate contraption just to challenge himself. At age eleven, I created a motion censor alarm project for my school using a magnet, a light bulb and an old bicycle alarm just to impress my science teacher. Growing up in the information age and watching technology grow around me, it was hard to stay away from computers. I got my first computer in 2001. I was fascinated with my new computer completely, and for the next two years I was committed to learning as much as I possibly could about it, I even took a twenty one day course in computer maintenance and repair to start things off. Which in 2003 and at the age of thirteen qualified me to get a job at an internet caf. Being only thirteen years of age, I had very little use for the money, but the idea of interacting with customers, having access to the internet, and the potential to learn more and more about computers through experience was enough for me. As I delved deeper and deeper into the IT world, my grades started to slowly drop, and I realized that I was spending too much time working and very little time studying but by the time I came to that conclusion that drop had already made a profound impact on my future; it forced me to get into business school, instead of engineering school as I had originally intended. Being an only child to a divorced mother who never remarried, and living in a middle class home, made tuition somewhat of an issue for me, I didn't want my mother to bare the burden of paying for my school as she had enough on her plate with the house and at the time some bank loans that had to be paid every month, so I decided to view the issue of tuition as a challenge I should face head on by working even harder and paying my way through college, which continued to take it's toll on my grades all through the first two years of college. Up until that point I had believed that the only career I could ever possibly have had to be solely computer based and had I been told back then that I would someday be pursuing a graduate degree in business administration, I would've certainly laughed at the mere idea. but in time my perspectives came to change, thanks to my business professor at the higher institution of commercial sciences and computers Dr. Alsayed Abdulmenem, who helped me view business school in a whole new light, and whom I have considered a mentor and a role model to me to this day. Meeting Dr. Abdulmenem made me open my eyes to the possibility that I wasn't limited

to only working with computers in my professional career, and that grasping business and management concepts came easy to me because my circumstances have prepared me for being a natural leader, mainly because my status as "The man of the house" which I grew to find my self embracing as a result of living with my mother after she and my father got divorced when I was one year old. That realization gave me the extra motivation I needed to push myself harder in both my work and studies resulting in a significant improvement in my grades during my last two years of college, leading a team of five students into winning third place in a regional cultural competition against all other schools in the governant, and leading a team of fifteen students in creating a full electronic human recourses management system for my school's HR department as a graduation project for which I received a grade of "Very Good" and my bachelor's in business information systems. As a graduate desiring to pursue my MBA studies abroad, my goal is to acquire a broader perspective on business as it's taught in a well developed, culturally diverse beacon of capitalism that is the U.S, in order to gain the knowledge I need to merge my academic studies with my technical passion and work experience and hopefully be able to benefit the Egyptian markets in it's post-revolution state of growth by using my MBA to acquire a teaching position where I can teach business to Egyptian students which will give me the experience I need as well as the means to start my own company which will specialize in providing computerized business training solution to Egyptian businesses and business owners. I also aim to act as a cultural ambassador of sorts, learning about the American culture and way of life while well representing the Egyptian people and raising awareness about Egyptian culture and traditions abroad. In closing, I would like to add that I believe that a person's potential for excellence is paralleled only by his ambition and determination, which is why I believe that I have the potential to influence my field while benefiting myself, my family, my country, and in turn the world. And as a world wide destination for all scholars and students who are adamant on making the most impact they can for the betterment of mankind for many years, I believe that the Fulbright Egyptian student program is the ideal beacon from which such effort would best be launched.