Students looking to graduate and jump into the private sector were given a taste of New York’s Wall Street and Binghamton’s Main Street.
Binghamton University’s Graduate Student Organization (GSO), Alumni Association and Enactus, a business-oriented student organization, hosted business entrepreneurs Ziad Abdelnour and Dan Mori on Saturday in the Old Union Hall.
Mori is president and founder of Employment Solutions, a local staffing and recruiting company, and Abdelnour is president and CEO of Blackhawk Partners Inc., a commodities trading and private investment firm.
Abdelnour spoke to the group about how becoming successful takes time, adding that overnight success is not usually possible. He encouraged students to be relentless and not only work hard, but efficiently.
“A lot of people get very close to success and then they give up,” Abdelnour said. “It can take sometimes weeks, months, years, decades. An overnight success is really 15 years. It takes time, it takes perseverance, never ever giving up and passion to be successful.”
Mori said that his professional success came from his drive to help people and ability to handle daily issues. He said students could boost their careers by also looking to improve the lives of the people around them.
“The most important info that [students] can take away is students have the ability to change,” Mori said. “There are directly things that they can do to make a difference, be a leader and generate wealth for [their] community.”
Thomas Kirk, a sophomore double-majoring in actuarial science and economics, said he was impressed with how the speakers succeeded by pushing those around them to succeed as well.
“I was very inspired by what the speakers said: that in order to be a leader you have to inspire other leaders, not just have people follow you, but really inspire them to follow your common goal,” Kirk said.
Abdelnour also spoke about his book, “Economic Warfare: Secrets of Wealth Creation in the Age of Welfare Politics,” which describes his decades of experience working on Wall Street. He said he faced regular challenges with government intrusion, but that his model and advice offered solutions to succeed financially.
“There is a warfare between the wealth takers and the wealth creators, the wealth takers being the government and the wealth creators are the entrepreneurs,” Abdelnour said. “Today, the wealth takers are winning.”
According Rukhsar Sharif, one of the organizers from the GSO and a third-year graduate student studying education, Mori and Abdelnour were chosen because they each brought economic activity to New York state. He said that Abdelnour’s professional success was a good model of leadership, while Mori demonstrated the importance of networking and building local relationships with community members.
“[Abdelnour] has made vast changes to make NYC the best it can be economically and spread wealth in the community,” Sharif said. “He came here to talk about leadership and community wealth creation, as he embodies it. And Dan Mori from the Southern Tier is another can-do, active businessman who helps explain the importance of helping and using your community.”