Partnering with CFA Institute to Prepare Tomorrow's Leaders

As a finance and accounting professor at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Zouheir Tamim-Jarkas had always admired the technical rigor of the CFA Program. For years, he encouraged university administrators to adopt such a program, and he proved to be instrumental in coordinating the effort to become a CFA Program Partner, which means 70 percent of the CFA Program curriculum is now covered through the university's courses.

In 1995, during his tenure as a professor in Canada, Tamim-Jarkas earned the CFA designation. "What really helped me most when studying for the charter was the fact that I was teaching some of the topics that I was going to be tested on," he recalls.

Once Tamim-Jarkas had passed his exams and earned the charter, he became an even greater advocate of the CFA Program — both inside and outside the classroom. "It was obvious to me that the university could really benefit from a program that was so relevant and practical to what these students were going to experience on the job," he explains.

His passion for teaching and his experience in the classroom made his next career move seem like a natural one. In 2008, he accepted a position in Abu Dhabi as senior adviser of learning and development at Mubadala, a business development and investment company. His responsibilities include instructing new hires (trainees) on Level I of the CFA Program. Tamim-Jarkas considers this to be as close to his "dream job" as he could have ever imagined: a perfect union of his love of learning and his knowledge of the CFA Program curriculum.

"My job is to ensure that every UAE national that joins the company is trained using CFA Program materials, with the idea that the employee must pass Level I before assuming financial analysis responsibility within the company," Tamim-Jarkas says. A key reason for joining the team, he explains, is the emphasis the organization places on education, lifelong learning, and ethics. "Just like CFA [Institute]," he says.

As past president and current education chairman of his local member society, CFA Emirates, Tamim-Jarkas believes that building a foundation of investment leaders in the region will make a difference in the future of the UAE financial system. The first step is educating tomorrow's leaders.

"Many companies, in addition to ours, have adopted the CFA Program curriculum and use it as a benchmark of excellence," he says. Tamim-Jarkas explains that interacting with these future leaders gives him hope that he is improving the investment landscape by instructing the trainees on international best practices. He purposefully recruits new hires for his training program from varied disciplines: engineering, medicine, law, and business, to name just a few.

When trainees voice concern about going back to "school" to study after just graduating with a variety of degrees, backgrounds, and experiences, Tamim-Jarkas has a consistent response: "If you really are serious about finance as a career and you want to have international recognition and mobility within the financial world, in addition to a curriculum that is very well grounded in industry practices — and on top of all of this, to be ethical at your work — then you should consider the CFA Program."

To this day, he has never had a trainee drop out of the program, nor has he had a trainee leave the company after going through the program. "I'm more worried that if I don't train them, they might stay," he says matter-of-factly.

His affection for the trainees and his enthusiasm for the subject matter make him an ideal instructor for the CFA curriculum. "They [students] become my friends more than anything else," he says.

And it's obvious that the trainees appreciate and admire Tamim-Jarkas as well. Past trainees often call him for career and professional advice, which he encourages and welcomes. "This creates an environment where knowledge sharing and caring really permeates through the company."

Promoting the sharing and transfer of knowledge are the cornerstones of the group, Tamim-Jarkas says. "Leaders are lifelong learners, never remaining stagnant but learning all the time as the industry will change."

Interview conducted in February 2010.

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