Empowering Egypt’s rising business community, EPN
Building bridges with local and international Egyptian professionals while simultaneously supporting local grassroots entities is one of the School’s top priorities. Realizing this strategic goal, earlier this December, The AUC School of Business signed a cooperation protocol with the Egyptian Professionals Network (EPN), one of the fastest-growing virtual global communities for Egyptian professionals.
EPN is a fast-growing community with an exclusive networking group on Facebook. It aims to bring together an elite group of Egyptian professionals working in various fields and located worldwide. Today, the global community grew to encompass more than 8000 success-driven, high-achieving professionals across 60 countries.
This year, EPN was one of the 77 most impactful communities on Facebook selected to participate in the Facebook Community Accelerator 2020, a six-month program designed to support and accelerate the most impactful community startups' growth worldwide.
A partnership built on a common cause
The main objective of the partnership with EPN is to empower the community members and help them realize their full potential, and most importantly, to bring the school one step closer to a community of bright minds and unique talents. This way, the school can support the professional development needs of successful, career-driven Egyptian professionals wishing to further their career in a strong academic institution and receive an international academic experience whilst remaining in Egypt and strengthening their professional network in the region. The school supports this life-long journey by providing a full range of graduate and executive programs and offering several scholarships.
“It made complete sense to partner up with such a leading academic institution in the region - an institution that is committed to academic excellence and to enabling and empowering people to develop further in their careers. This is all completely aligned with what we do at EPN. We try to support and help our members to achieve their full potential wherever they are and whatever they do,” stated Mona El-Kheshen ‘02, founder and community leader, EPN, in an online conference with Sherawat Elwan, associate professor of operations management and director of the MBA programs, as well as Maha Farouk, director of marketing for graduate programs, aimed at unveiling the school’s revamped two year MBA programs to the community with their two new focused tracks: corporate and entrepreneurship. As part of the partnership, the school is now offering partial scholarship places for EPNers.
Through this cooperation, the school aims to raise brand awareness and gain influential brand ambassadors within the exclusive and actively engaged EPN community. We will work closely with EPN to bring benefits and opportunities to the community and help members decide on the right program or development needed at each stage of their career to help them take their next big step.
Expanding beyond the Facebook bubble
While EPN’s Facebook group started in March 2019 to connect people, it became a source for service seekers to find quality service providers within the community. As members trusted each other and EPN’s recommendations, the group’s founders saw in this an opportunity for expansion.
In December 2020, they launched UNLOCK, an online discovery platform connecting Egypt’s finest professional service providers with service seekers looking to partner with trusted and recommended organizations. Unlock allows service seekers to browse providers by category, read their customer reviews, and contact them directly via a lead form inquiry.
As part of the partnership between the school and EPN, AUC School of Business Executive Education was among the first pioneers to get invited to showcase its wide range of comprehensive globally-recognized professional development and executive education programs within the unlock pioneer program - an exclusive invite-only program for selected EPN partners.
The Egyptian Professionals Network has an ambitious and applaudable mission, offering a unique model of a truly collaborative community that fits the School’s mandate. The group continues to grow in numbers globally, covering a wide range of services while remaining very selective in its admission process, making us very happy to support developing the talents within this highly active community.