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I’m a 25-year-old newly qualified doctor from the UK who is very interested in entrepreneurship and is part of the new NHS Clinical Entrepreneur program which aims to turn doctors into innovators to create the healthcare technology of the future. I have masters in Public Health and am currently working on YouTube content to help promote Lifestyle medicine (Nutrition, physical activity, sleep health, mental health, and wellness) in Pakistan to tackle the misconceptions that exist around health.
I spent 3 months in my hometown Islamabad on my medical elective before returning to the UK in July to attend my medical graduation. I was delighted to experience Pakistan’s start-up ecosystem by attending the newly built state of the art National Incubation Centre; a joint venture between Jazz and the Ministry of Information in an attempt to digitalize Pakistan. I was pleasantly surprised by the appetite Pakistanis to possess to be innovators and entrepreneurs. It shouldn’t be a surprise after seeing the rapid adoption of apps such as Careem by the public and the increasing smartphone ownership statistics in Pakistan. Technology is the sector in which we must focus in order to bring us closer to the rest of the world. It is through entrepreneurs a society evolves and economies develop.
The CIE results being released seems to create a lot of pressure for students and families with increasing importance to do well in order to gain admissions in foreign and home universities. This reminded me of my own results. I was fortunate to perform well. I achieved 11 A*’s at GCSE including coming in the top 10 students nationally in Business Studies (out of 19202 students), Statistics (out of 44566 students) and Information and Communication Technology (out of 11249 students) in the UK.
Oddly enough, I chose to study Sciences at A-level and abandoned the subjects I had a talent for. I was fortunate to achieve 4 A*’s at A-level and an offer from The University of Cambridge to study medicine. However, that is where I made a brave decision and went against the grain by declining my offer from the prestigious University of Cambridge. There was a lot of pressure from family but I knew I had to make my own choice. Some may think I’m mad but in my view, you must make the choices which are right for you in life. The same choices, grades, achievements aren’t for all of us and we must carve our own paths in life. I have for sure ended up better for it.
What I’ve learned from my experience is that it’s important to do what you enjoy and only then will you truly be successful. Unfortunately, sometimes that means struggling to find that path. During medical school, my passion for innovation and entrepreneurship was ignited and I had to defy many external factors to study at Imperial Business School for a year during my medical studies.
Sometimes you must take risks to disrupt the system. My best piece of advice would be to try and gain as many diverse skills as possible and become a multihyphenate because the jobs of the future will demand it. This is an important principle I learned luckily being part of Harvard Business School’s first ever ‘Live’ online cohort of 60 people chosen from around the world.
These experiences would never have been possible without perseverance and ignoring what people might say which inevitably they always will (a doctor studying business, wasting time, never wants to leave university). As a nation, we must encourage all skills and champion creativity. As the Harvard Professor Clayton Christensen says ‘Understanding motivation is one of the most important things we can do in our lives, because it has such a bearing on why we do the things we do and whether we enjoy them or not’.
We all have different talents and it’s time we recognize that we aren’t all ‘Doctors’ or ‘Engineers’ neither should we be. Entrepreneurs are often different in many ways and don’t always fit in with their peers due to their quirky personality traits but that is what is great and helps them to try new things and think outside of the box.
I write this as we enter Pakistan’s 70th-year post-Independence and I must reiterate it’s time we all become independent and make our own choices with regards to what we want to pursue in life. There are many different ways in which we can make an impact in the world and be successful in our own meaningful way.
