As a third-year bioengineering student at Northeastern University, Yousif Elaidi has plenty of experience working in a lab.
So, for his current partnership, he decided to take on something completely different: management consulting.
“I like how in counseling there's a lot of traveling and we talk to people a lot and it's very social,” says Elaidi. “It's really team-based — you're bouncing ideas off and always have to think of new ideas.”
Elaidi works with Wisdom Management Consultancy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The co-op is somewhat of a homecoming for Elaidi. His mother is Saudi, and he grew up traveling from his home in New Hampshire to spend summers in the kingdom.
But Elaidi says he is experiencing a different Saudi Arabia than the “closed” place he remembers as a child.
“Saudi Arabia is completely upside down,” says Elaidi. “The country has completely changed – there are people coming from abroad, there are many foreigners, there are many things to do, there are many activities – as for the new Saudi Arabia, I'm still getting used to it.”
Entering the business community at such an international crossroads has taught Elaidi a lot about how different cultures interact.
“It increases my bandwidth to work with different types of people because, at the end of the day, people in different parts of the world do business differently,” says Elaidi. “In the US, people do business differently than people do business in the Middle East and then Europe and Asia and so on. So I feel like it adds to my skill set to be able to work with people here and do business with them.”
It's a skill set that will likely come in handy.
In addition to his studies and as an assistant at Northeastern, Elaidi founded a clothing brand called Pharoah Collections that produces tracksuits, hoodies and other sportswear. He ran the company, which is based in the US, from Saudi Arabia while at a co-op – an experience he described as “kind of weird”.
“It's been a big learning curve, but I'd definitely love to continue if I can scale it,” says Elaidi. “Running the company's books, being good at creating plans, managing social media, running ads, the logistics of shipping and handling and all of that — it's all a learning curve.
“It's a great way to learn, just to dive in,” Elaidi continues.
She applies this lesson to counseling.
“When you come in, they drop you in and teach you, they teach you everything,” says Elaidi about counseling. “Well, it's just being able to think on your feet and have those technical skills that I think I get from my engineering classes — that's what you have to have.”
