Alumni Success Stories

Aya Toubar

Aya joined The British University in Egypt in 2005 from the IGCSE section of Dar El-Tarbia School. She was awarded a “High Achiever” certificate from Edexcel as she scored the highest score in Egypt in the Edexcel AL Accounting Examination, June 2005, and the eighth worldwide. That is when she decided to specialise in Accounting and Finance.

In 2009, Aya graduated top on her class with an excellent First Class Honours degree of Loughborough University in Business Administration, specialising in Accounting and Finance. Subsequently she has obtained an MBA in International Finance graduating with a Grade Point average of 3.92/4.

As a valedictorian, she was appointed as a Teaching Assistant (TA) in the Department of Business Administration in the BUE. She was awarded “Excellence in Teaching” certificate in 2010 and 2011. In 2012, she decided that it is time to have some real market experience so she moved to work for BP, first as a Planning and Performance Management (PPM) Specialist in the Procurement and Supply Chain Management (PSCM) Department. This role, although not related to Accounting and Finance, yet it involved some numeracy skills and analysis. Then in June 2014, she moved to another role within the same department; North Africa Risk and Assurance Specialist. This role involves some risk management activities as well as some quality assurance & compliance reporting.

Aya’s line managers clearly recognise her capabilities that her direct line manager says of her, “Aya is one of the best team members I have ever worked with. She acts with diligence, professionalism and demonstrates the right work ethics. Aya is a fast learner and has managed to build excellent rapport with other team members.” While another states, “Aya inspires people with her cheerfulness, helpfulness and honesty. At work she adds to that smartness, as she’s a bright young lady with great potential stimulated by her diligence and interpersonal skills.” And another manager describes her saying, “Aya is a patient and very conscientious individual. She appears cool under pressure. Her polite and restrained style belies her underlying drive however she still manages to transfer her sense of confidence and excitement. She is a resilient optimist who is constructively determined to learn and is motivated by achieving and getting recognized for enduring, value-adding improvements. She does this whilst respecting every colleague she works with. A significant motivator is a sense of helping people, directly or indirectly. Loyalty and respect for people are important values for her. She is ambitious for continued advancement. Interpersonally, she is socially skilled though only moderately gregarious. Her interpersonal style includes friendly body language, verbal fluency, active listening and sensitive choice of wording. Her positive intent and genuine desire to help quickly becomes apparent and she is able to establish and maintain good working relationships with a wide range of people. She cares for the people she works with and invests as much time as she can afford in direct contact with them; consulting and advising them as appropriate. She is customer-oriented in terms of being anxious to provide a good quality of service to her internal customers. She has a reasonably good understanding of her own personality and is insightful about how this influences her interpersonal style. She is immediately responsive to feedback in adjusting her behavior as appropriate. In terms of stakeholders that she gets to know, she seeks to understand their motives and concerns. She leverages this in managing or influencing them. She is insightful about cultural nuances and flexes her style sensitively in cross-cultural interactions. This ability to empathize is linked to her active listening skills and people values.”

Aya pins much of her success on her time at the BUE. According to her “My undergraduate studies at the BUE equipped me with all that is needed to enter the marketplace, starting from enhancing my interpersonal, presentation and leadership skills to developing my ability to analyse, work under pressure, work in teams and meet deadlines.”