My 2024 in a glance

For me 2024 was about pushing and extending my comfort zone, going through Challenges and the Rewards.

Extending the comfort zone:

last year, was an opportunity for me to look at what we do professionally with a new angle, Gender!

Since end of 2023, I have been providing consulting services in the area of Private Sector Development but this time with a gender focus. Thanks to Roberta Pellizzoli and working alongside her I learned a lot and tried to put efforts into supporting women Entrepreneurs and organisations to consider gender goals for a business development and better future.

Also, through a project with Universit?t Hamburg and working as part of Laura Marie Edinger-Schons team, I had the opportunity to conduct impact measurement for a very interesting Europe wide project. It was a good experience after almost 3 years to look back at the topic of impact and impact measurement.

During 2024, I conducted a number of trainings and delivered short projects covering Brand Storytelling. It is a topic I enjoy talking about and working with. 2024 has given me opportunity to invest more time and energy on it and serve clients in Europe and Africa.

Opening a Restaurant, since end of 2023 I started helping a friend in opening his restaurant in Germany, though I was new in Germany and in restaurant business. I have decided to help the friend to launch his business. It was both, stressful and surprising. I had to deal mainly with all the administrative steps to get the permit and I didn’t know what was waiting for me. But finally the restaurant started this June and seeing the business running now it makes me happy though I am not part of it anymore.

Finally, in 2024 with my wife we experienced what a real vacation means for a week. Growing up and working in Afghanistan. we have not experienced the vacations as in Europe. but it was a nice experience in France thanks to Arnaud CARREL and Valerie CARREL which we are planning to have it also in 2025.

Surviving the month of November:

While November started like a normal month but in reality it was the calm before the storm.

I was preparing my self for C1 German language exam in November and already feeling underprepared, during the time I got that we need to make a very important business decision that can impact the present and future of our business. Still dealing with those two my dad was diagnosed with one of the riskiest illnesses and my mom needed to go through a hand operation. On the top of that we had a project with a very tight deadline which was supposed to start in mid November and finish in December and I had to take care of that personally. All I knew was that I needed to put my self together and be strong during days in hospital or nights working on the project.That was the time that I told my self, if I could survive this month I would survive anything in my life. Also, choosing the right life partner helps a lot to go through challenges, something I am blessed with.

The rewards:

I graduated with a master of Leadership in Sustainable Finance, from the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management also early November. After two years of juggling between work, migration and education, finally I am done with this project thanks to the support of the whole team at FS specially Dr. Nataliia Cherkas , Prabono Hari Putranto , Junes Arfaoui , Andrea Beiter and other colleagues.

I could get the C1 German Degree and the exam went well.

My dad is doing better and now he is out of hospital.

What is next?

I want to remain a bit longer in academia, with my partner Behishta Nazir we are starting a new project we were waiting for long and so excited, Obrang will go through a rebranding with changes in our offerings and clients focusing more on Sustainability and Storytelling.

Happy new year from Lübeck!