My name is Sohaib Ahmed, and I’m an HBX CORe ’16 credential holder and the current Chief Operating Officer (COO) of 99point9, a Toronto-based standardized test and examination preparation company! I wanted to share a bit about my professional journey, and the role CORe has played in my development. 

Three years ago, I was an overwhelmed fourth-year undergrad. I felt lost. I wanted to go to medical school, but I wasn’t confident in my ability to get there. How could I be? The average GPA to get accepted was a 3.97, and the horror stories I heard from people trying to get in kept me up some nights. 

I was an immigrant – the first person in my family to come to Canada to become a doctor. How could I tell them that the dream they and I had had for me was unlikely to become a reality?

That’s when I got an interview offer at a home health care start-up. I didn’t know what the job entailed, but I was told was that I would be working with doctors, and that was enough for me.

From a relative zero to COO

I was hired as a call center agent and my job was to take patient phone calls starting from eight in the morning and ending at eleven in the evening, as well as to schedule physician appointments, and coordinate with physician drivers so that these appointments were executed.

I went all in. I was juggling full-time school, work, and studying for the MCAT (the Medical College Admissions Test, used to admit undergraduates into medical school).

After getting a handle on my role, I began taking on any extra responsibilities I could. I started managing the software development team to automate activities and revamp our website and app and proposed ideas to the CEO to resolve day-to-day issues. Within months, I was unofficially managing operations and was responsible for recruiting and running the driver fleet. The more responsibility I asked for and the more results I produced, the more work I got.

Upon graduation, I was given a big opportunity to expand our company as a New Markets Manager in Ottawa, CA. The process was grueling and trying. I formulated strategy, wrote procedures and policy, networked with physicians, hired employees, built the demand for the service, you name it. After a successful launch, I came back to Toronto and made my case to the company's board to become the Chief Operating Officer. 

Being a C-level executive was invigorating and capacity-building, and I enjoyed it immensely. Six months later, I accepted another COO position at 99point9, where I am again responsible for running the entirety of operations, working with the Co-Executive Directors to define company vision, optimize budgeting and capital generation, quality-check curricula, develop regional, national, and international growth schemes, define student acquisition and instructor recruitment strategies, optimize course logistics, set and implement social media strategy, coordinate promotions, and publicly engage student and educator audiences on our company’s behalf. 

Beyond

Through these two roles, I came to realize that I love the world of business in addition to the world of medicine. As I thought about where I want to take my career next, I was hard-pressed to do either an MBA or an MD: I wanted something that would expose me to the fundamentals of business without costing me too much in the way of both finances and my time.

Enter HBX CORe! The moment I saw an advertisement for CORe, I was sold. It offered exactly what I wanted – convenience, challenge, community, and opportunity. Through the course, I made many new connections, some of whom I will be meeting at the upcoming ConneXt. I also learned concepts, case studies, and content which I now use daily at 99point9. 

While the many experiences I had in business prior to CORe made me a capable entrepreneur, CORe formalized those aspects of my knowledge that were lacking, and equipped me to make more technically analytical decisions. It also exposed me to a new line of networking; as someone who routinely uses LinkedIn, Facebook, and magazine publications to build an audience, I found CORe’s network unique and very valuable.

Now, I take the knowledge I’ve amassed via CORe and apply it to my work at 99point9 every day in an attempt to further our reach and further our mission to automate and disrupt the test prep industry. 

I’m excited to continue my development as an entrepreneur, and feel more confident in my decision making now that I have a stronger academic foundation thanks to HBX CORe. I can’t wait to see what courses HBX produces next, and I sincerely hope I can continue my education with HBX and Harvard Business School! You should join in, too!

In the author bio we can put "If you’re interested in finding out more about my work, or if you’d like my thoughts on CORe, please feel free to contact me!"