Wendy Cebula Case Study

Wendy Cebula, President and COO of edX, had originally started her career during the ‘dotcom’ bubble in the late 1990’s. While experimenting with the newly founded ways of e-business,she was impressively able to grow a company from $1 million to over $1 billion in revenue globally in a 12 year span. When I first read about Wendy, I was impressed. She was a young female who had navigated a very fresh new business scene, and scored great success. Coming from Saudi Arabia, female figures like Cebula represent hope; They are, to ambitious and career-oriented women, what Cinderellas in fairytales are to young girls. The more I read about her, the more I got attached to a career in Finance. It is safe to say, that Wendy Cebula, being a notable alumni
International travel was a family ritual - which I am thankful for - as I was forced to observe the economic contrasts between underdeveloped, developing and developed countries. I was obsessive with the idea of constructive change, and this introduced me to the sciences of self-development and Feng Shui. I involved myself in community services wherever possible, and jumped at every volunteer opportunity fully aware of the value of knowledge and service contained in each. With all of this combined, it striked me that what the Middle East region lacked was a strong economic foundation and I could easily see how this deficiency linked to the troubled socio-political scene, the various human rights situations, corruption, wealth disparity and unequal distribution of resources that plagued the region. Even so, I felt unaware and fervently curious about how things worked, leading me to further explore and decide thereafter that Finance was my main point of
I also learned that the fiscal foundation, and skill level of financial management, can be the stand, fall or struggle of a company. Aside from corporate finance, a more interesting topic to me was the workings of the financial sector itself; The know-how of global financial transactions, financial markets analysis, and the financial structure of complex acquisitions. It is no wonder that the science of Finance is so imperative to the operation of the global economy- almost like the science of engineering - it will tell you how things work and what will happen when you change them. One year prior to graduation, I accepted a six-week internship opportunity at Riyadh Capital – a wealth and investments management company. I was placed in the operations department where I was directly exposed to Local Stocks Trading, Investment Funds, and Remittances among other types of transactions. This experience truly provided me with the impetus to do my Masters to cover a wider range of subject areas. Towards the end of my four-year term, my view on finance, entrepreneurship and economics had been broadened, and I took interest in oragnizations’ operations and their capital structures and the cluttered repercussions that debt - and the ways it can be raised – can have on these