Meet Shaima Kasem: “I Need to Learn Something New Every Day”

She is an entrepreneur and, through Below Zero, SDU’s talent programme in green entrepreneurship, she has developed ideas for how companies can work with the green transition in their day-to-day operations. Earlier this year, she also took part in and won the Business School’s case competition together with her classmates. The case was provided by the company NEWTEC, which challenged the students with a marketing assignment.

From the outset, Shaima knew she wanted to participate in the competition for a specific reason:

“I wanted to challenge myself and put my knowledge to the test.”

Her team won the case competition, and during the final presentation Shaima caught the company’s attention. Following the event, NEWTEC invited her for a coffee meeting.

The business case competition also gave her a head start in getting to know the company, as the students worked intensively with NEWTEC for two weeks. So when Shaima was invited for a coffee meeting at NEWTEC, she was quickly offered a position as a student assistant. The company placed its trust in Shaima and gave her the opportunity to help shape her role and, in many ways, create her own job. She contributes ideas, insights, and expertise across a broad range of tasks, including marketing, video production, communication, and process optimisation. At NEWTEC, Shaima is encouraged to be inquisitive and curious. She values the strong sense of collegiality and makes a point of talking with colleagues across departments. As she explains:

- Gaining insight into my colleagues’ day-to-day work is essential for being able to solve the company’s communication tasks. I feel that my colleagues treat me as an equal and are always willing to share their knowledge. That makes it easy for me to understand their work, learn more about the company, and gain insight into its products and operations.

Some of the more technical aspects of the company’s systems and industrial machinery were new to Shaima. However, the engineers and IT specialists are skilled at explaining how the products work, and Shaima lives by a simple motto: “I need to learn something new every day.”

For Shaima, there is a strong connection between her studies and her work at NEWTEC. In addition to developing her marketing skills on the job, she is given the opportunity to analyse business processes, provide feedback on workflows, and contribute ideas for internal innovation initiatives. Here, she draws on knowledge from her MSc in Economics and Business Administration, particularly from courses on megatrends, innovation, and management. She combines this knowledge with the intercultural communication skills she developed during her bachelor’s degree in International Business Communication and Modern Languages (Negot). These skills are especially valuable when she collaborates with the company’s international departments. Shaima sees herself as a generalist who can adapt to many different contexts and contribute to organisations across industries and disciplines.

Shaima recommends that young people and students gain experience in a workplace environment and take the time to talk to their colleagues, especially those who are “much older than you.” Through conversations with her experienced colleagues, she became aware of the many opportunities that may lie ahead. She explains that throughout the education system and when choosing a degree programme, it can sometimes feel as though you are locking yourself into a particular career path or industry. For a long time, she was unsure how to make the right choice.

Her conversations in the workplace have opened her eyes to the possibility of shaping a career in unconventional ways and taking on very different roles over the course of a professional life. As a result, she now finds it much easier to see her opportunities broadly across the business world, and the feeling of having boxed herself into a single career path is gradually fading.

Shaima sees many possibilities for the future. For now, however, she is enjoying the opportunity to explore and grow at NEWTEC, where she speaks openly about her interests and actively helps shape the kinds of tasks and responsibilities she takes on.