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Online MBA colleagues now educate online
After completing the Aston MBA, Dr Jeelan Moghraby (MBA, 2015) has partnered with a fellow MBA, Florin Tampau (MBA, 2014), to establish her own educational technology platform, MondoScience. Here is their story. Before starting her business, Jeelan worked full-time as an Assistant Professor at King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences in Saudi Arabia, where she spotted a gap in the educational technology market around science education whilst studying her MBA online. Jeelan combined her passion for science education and her new found experience of an online learning environment to give herself the opportunity to help more people learn this way.
We also asked Florin about the advice he would give to others looking to start their own business. Florin highlighted the following,
If I could offer one piece of advice to myself when leaving the MBA it would be to get involved in the start-up world.”
Florin, has a background in IT and Telecommunications and is Strategic Product Manager at Ericsson. With an entrepreneurial mind-set and coming from the digital transformation, cloud technology and business innovation sector, joining together on this project seemed the ideal collaboration for them. We caught up with Jeelan to ask how the idea for MondoScience developed. Jeelan described her experience, “We are in an age of technology where we use the internet as our primary source of information. In fact, I would be lucky if any of my students opened their books. Many students spend hours searching the internet for resources to help them understand different scientific topics. But some of these resources require a certain amount of background knowledge. I believe that everyone can understand science, but you need a good solid foundation of the key topics first. Once you have that, you can progress with more confidence. So, I provide courses focusing on each core element in biology and biochemistry.” When asked what aspects of their MBA helped them start a business. Jeelan added, “The MBA at Aston Business School also helped me build connections and friendships. I am still in contact with all of my MBA cohort, particularly, Florin Tampau as he’s joined me at MondoScience, helping to develop and execute ideas.” Chatting to Florin about his involvement with MondoScience, we asked, “You already have a full time role, why did you want to get involved in the entrepreneurial sector?” Florin commented, “I take initiative, motivate, drive and have meaningful impact through my work. Being curious and having a desire to continuously learn and develop is also something that characterizes me, and is important when starting a business. The broad technology and business understanding acquired over the years gives me an overall view on the business and its priorities. The MBA helped me to get that business knowledge which complemented very well the tech background. Working with Jeelan at MondoScience is motivating, rewarding and fun. We want to make a difference in the way students study science, giving them access to the right content and support. Besides learning so many new things in a start-up business you see the impact you have every day. All the effort you put in has a result on how the business is doing and we are proud we have built MondoScience in such a short time.
Picture above Florian (left) and Jeelan (right) INTERNATIONAL WOMENS’ DAY 2018 We celebrated International Womens’ Day in March by hosting a session with our Entrepreneurs. Pictured (left to right): Victoria Masso (MSc International Business, 2014) founder of Be-Origami, Rosie Ginday (Goldman Sachs, Alumni) founder of Miss Macaroon with our MSc Entrepreneurship team Dr Anna Rebmann and Dr Emma Folmer with current student Francisca Krabberod.