My Story

This is a brief overview of my (adult) life in 600 words. It explains my reasons for leaving Jordan and going to America.

Moving to Boston to go to college was definitely the best thing that ever happened to me. It felt as if, for the first time in my life, I had the space to think about what I wanted in life. In short order I switched from majoring in Pharmacy to Philosophy and Psychology. It was also in Boston where I developed my interest in Art and Painting, for which I never knew I had a talent for. I thought of becoming a therapist, I wanted to be an artist, but eventually, and for practical considerations, I got my MBA. It was while I was an MBA student that I met the person who would become my future wife.

When I went back to Jordan after having been in Boston for 8 years, I had no way of knowing about the situation that awaited me there. As far as I knew my family had an established 44 year old pharmaceutical business, KDS, and we had just expanded into generics pharmaceutical manufacturing through another family owned business, Hayat. Shortly after I started working for Hayat, the extent of the problem became more and more clear to me: both company's financial situation was untenable, and both were headed towards financial disaster. Worse, the family's personal assets were all tied into the business. The first victim of this situation was the family itself, as disagreements escalated and ultimately led to a divide in our family that is not showing any signs of healing any time soon.

We needed to fix both the financial structure and performance of both businesses, and during seven years we did just that, thanks largely to the efforts of my brother Maher and myself. This involved changing the way we do things, the way we think about things, developing plans and a workable strategy, and thankfully we were able to do it. One of the most rewarding things for me personally was to observe how the people working for me changed, became energized, and felt rewarded through their own achievements. In 7 short years we turned things around, and although the financial situation is still fragile, it is well past the critical stage.

As for myself, and although I had been thrust up the managerial ladder extremely quickly, I always felt like a reluctant Marketing Manager. I always had a sense that what I was doing was temporary and that I would leave, but given the untenable financial situation never felt that I could; the business needed me, my employees and my family depended on me. My departure finally became possible for me for 3 reasons; first, that we finally succeeded in securing a cash injection through investment in Hayat, second, our performance was becoming more and more reliable, and we had a good team (and hopefully a new culture) that was responsible for it, and third, I realized that I am not getting any younger, and I wanted to go before I was too old to be able to do so.

In a sense, I came to America to start over from zero, to prove to myself that my success in Jordan was not due to having been the son of the owner of the business. I came here for the privilege of making it on my own, and for having the freedom to pursue any interests and any line of work that I choose, rather than that proscribed by the family business. There are 2 things now that can really make things a lot better; one, is for me to find a job that interests me and that I can do well, and two, if we could have a Democrat for president. That would be quite a good improvement on the current status quo.

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