Today, Ahmed El Saadany is a management consultant for the world-renowned McKinsey & Company.

He was still pursuing a Mechanical Engineering Ph. D. at the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering department of Ryerson University when he received an email offer to take part in Mitacs’ Step workshops.

“I thought I might benefit from learning a little bit more about the business environment, but I didn’t have very high expectations about the workshops themselves,” El Saadany says. It turned out his expectations were to be exceeded by far. In the end, El Saadany took part in half a dozen different Mitacs Step skills development workshops.

What sets the Step workshops apart, El Saadany thinks, is first and foremost the quality and professionalism of the presenters. However, the content has also proven very useful to him. 

“Learning how to present yourself – in person or on paper – or about networking, about public speaking, about business etiquette – which is very useful, especially to international students who come from a different culture – these are all things you don’t necessarily get to learn through the course of science or engineering studies,” El Saadany notes.

“We may tend to think graduate studies are all about academic papers and degrees, but there are so many other things we need to learn that we are not aware of. You won’t know how much you’re missing as long as you haven’t attended Mitacs’ Step workshops.”