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Samir Estefan '08 |
Samir Estefan '08
Samir Estefan ’08 doesn’t go anywhere without his laptop and Smartphone. And when he has the spare time, he can’t resist playing Nintendo Wii with his son. But that’s to be expected from a businessman involved with one of the world’s largest enterprise software companies, right?
Not so fast, says Oracle’s indirect sales manager, responsible for sales in Colombia and Ecuador. Although he jokingly calls himself “somewhat of a geek,” there’s much more than a love of technology to this 33-year-old, Colombian-born professional who sports an Arabic name.
“My grandfather immigrated to Colombia from Syria early in the 1900s,” explains Estefan. “Although he passed away over 30 years ago, we have kept some of the customs; we usually eat Arabic food in our family meetings, and I – and both of my children – have Arab names.”
Exposure to different customs and cultures wasn’t just part of Estefan’s heritage. Through his father’s professional roles at IBM and Exxon, Estefan was exposed to foreign visitors on a regular basis. “I got used to a multi-national way of doing things,” he says, indicating that such interactions also led him to professional positions with multi-national companies.
In his first job, Estefan worked in the financial sector for a European Bank, and later for a U.S.-based investment fund. But in 2000, he put his passion for technology to use as he entered the information technology (IT) sector.
“Technology has brought us all together – every country, every person, every economy,” says Estefan. “The globe is now our playground.”
In his current role, Estefan interacts in that global playground. “On the administrative side of my job, there is much interaction with our shared service centers in India and Romania, as well as with some specific groups in the United States, Costa Rica and Argentina,” he explains. Travel is also a part of the job Estefan embraces, traveling regionally and globally 40 percent of the time.
As indirect sales manager, he is also responsible for coordinating the sales activities of his team of 11 sales associates and more than 50 business partners. Since he began Thunderbird’s program, the detail-oriented Estefan earned a promotion, catapulting from regional manager for Oracle’s Latin American compliance division to a manager-level position that includes additional responsibility and challenge.
Estefan says he feels confident in his current role and looks forward to even greater responsibility in the future. “One of the grateful surprises of this program is that lessons can be immediately applied to daily activities,” he explains. “Since the first semester's business communications lessons, which have helped me improve my written skills, every other week I have taken something with me that can be immediately applied.” The Theories of Cross-Cultural Communication and Competing through Strategy/People courses, he says, have helped him manage and lead his new team, and strengthened his ability to work with people from other cultures.
Estefan says it’s not a coincidence that he chose Thunderbird’s and ITESM’s joint program for his MBA. “I deeply believe that technology can change the world by giving anyone the chance to take advantage of the best education available,” he says.
What better kind of MBA than one with a global focus and one that is totally immersed in technology, he asks, noting that – unsurprisingly – he found Thunderbird by using the very technology he loves: the Internet.
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