The story of my life was one of most inspiring TRG sessions to date. Veqar Ul Islam, Head of Sub region for Middle East Africa for Nokia Siemens Networks, connected with participants as he bared the story of his struggle, aspirations and career with honesty, humility and humour.

Veqar is currently amongst the most prominent personalities of the IT and Telecom Industry and has to his credit achievements and networks that many of us dream of. A high achiever throughout his career and a marketer par excellence, he is known for his out of box approach towards managing and growing the business.

He said stories starts when we are born. We face many hardships, experience novel things and grow in a variety of ways. But as this life ends, we are empty-handed and leave everything behind, but character. In his career, which is still growing, he always focused on maintaining his character based on his principles and values.

For success, one has to be special in whatever work one is involved in. For the IBA entrance test, out of 3000 applicants for 150 seats, Veqar cleared and got in. Interestingly, the same year, he flunked and dropped out of IBA. He emphasized that nothing in life is constant but the pursuit of success and happiness.

Veqar Sb first passion was singing and performing, but he let it go in obedience to his mother’s wishes. Similarly, while he wanted to pursue working, he instead took up M.Com on his father’s call. He said his biggest reason for success was his attitude towards his parent – he put many people in guilt by confessing of only one occasion where he raised his voice to his mother.

With a 45% marks in Bachelors, he appeared for M.Com in Karachi University, and was discouraged by the clerk for not fulfilling the eligibility for applying into Masters. Luckily he managed to get through, submit the form, get an interview slot and get selected as the only 2nd division employee.

During his M.Com, he started off his professional career from Jaffer Brothers as a Sales Representative and burnt the mid-night oil to achieve his targets. Six months down the line, he got promoted to Star Salesman and finally became Sales Head in the same organization. Similarly in NCR, Veqar grew himself and the firm by multifold. Veqar captured his success in the following three-step approach:

 Vision – that an individual must have it to direct the course of life
 Dream- that one must dream bigger to achieve bigger
 Solution-Oriented Approach – to fight against the odds of life and never give up.

He concluded his session by defining success as any targets one sets and achieves whether it is singing in a band or buying a car. TRG founder member, Kamran Rizvi, presented the closing remarks, followed by Q/A session by eager and inspired participants.