Rayen Benchaabane
Candidate for the position as “President”
Tell us about yourself and what you are currently dedicating your time towards?
I'm currently in my last year of the Undergraduate degree in management and business administration specialized in international finance. I'm from Tunisia and for now I'm living there but I intend to go for another Erasmus in February. Actually my " to do list " for everyday is quite long so my time is dedicated for several things. We have first, studying at the university, and since it is my last year so the courses are intensive, secondly, I am taking part of the developing Excellence program with ESAA, as well as I am managing an ESAA Project that was selected during the call of August and now I'm will start the implementation phase.
Do you have any previous experience with OCEANS and if so in what capacity?
I joined OCEANS last June, and the first thing was the AGM where I got to know some key persons in the organization, as well as to understand what is OCEANS, also the prospective of both vision and mission of the organization. I was from the beginning interested since I am the kind of persons that believes that in order to succeed in my career as well as my personal life, I need a very diverse network and OCEANS is a very good alternative. Then I had the opportunity to be selected for the leadership training which is an ESAA PROJECT and last thing I worked on an ESAA project idea aiming to promote Erasmus, and to Strengthen higher education in my country and my idea was selected, and to be honest having your own project and making it work is a very interesting challenge for me.
What motivates you to apply for this position?
Well, a lot of factors are motivating me for this position. In fact, I am the kind of person that is always seeking for progress, and since I am active in our organization the idea of taking a step forward to be more than just a member was present from the beginning. Now the position itself is very interesting, especially in my case. I am studying management, and the dream is to have my own business and to make a difference in this world so I think being in the position of a president in such international environment and managing a team of persons from different backgrounds and cultures will be very beneficial and will definitely help me in developing my managerial skills. Of course, not forgetting that I will make more important contacts from partner organizations and even from the European commission.
What skills and qualities can you bring to this position?
Efficiency is a common objective between all human in my opinion, as we all want to achieve the set-up goals with minimum cost and time, and I consider myself as someone with a very high level of efficiency. I believe that I was born to be a leader because some qualities such as charisma, humility...are innate, but also with all the experiences that I have been through, I developed a lot of key leadership qualities which made me more self-aware and always seeking for personal development as well as the development of people around me by encouraging strategic thinking, innovation, and showing empathy.
What are your plans and ideas for the future of OCEANS?
The most relevant strength in our organization is our diversity on two scales mainly: first one is cultural, as we are from all part of the world and the second is professional as we cover a lot of academic fields. For this reason, I consider engaging more our members in working together in different kinds of projects is essential because they need more interaction together in order to build strong links between them. Also, my plan is to focus more on partnerships with different student movements and associations around the world in order to make our network wider and to increase visibility on our organization. Moreover, it is highly important to focus on the personal and professional development of our members by organization our own training sessions and workshops dependably from the ones organized by ESAA or other partners.
