Monday, November 28, 2011

Saint Mary's University Student Lecture - Saeed El-Dara


Local Company Pays It Forward

Local Company Pays It Forward


Scholarships Honour Two Saint Mary's Professors

Two Saint Mary’s professors, Dr. Dawn Jutla, in the Department of Finance, Information Systems, and Management Science and Dr. Porter Scobey, in the Department of Mathematics and Computing Science, have had scholarships named in their honour by local company, SimplyCast, an international leader in multi-channel marketing Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions.


"It is an honor to be a graduate from the best university in the world,” says SimplyCast President and CEO, Saeed El-Darahali, a Saint Mary’s alumnus who teaches part time at the University. “It is my goal to give back as much as possible. This is the least I can do for the excellent education you have given me and my co-workers at SimplyCast.”


El-Darahali has hired five St. Mary’s graduates to work at SimplyCast and is interviewing another one this week. The $500 scholarships take a positive step in shaping the next generation of business professionals. At the same time, these scholarships recognize two professors whose knowledge and dedication have helped shape SimplyCast as a company.


"I was deeply touched by Saeed's gesture and his appreciation of our interactions,” says Dr. Dawn Jutla, for whom one of the scholarships was named. “Saeed is an IT entrepreneur extraordinaire and certainly one to watch. He has a wonderful knack for realizing and extracting value from university-industry synergies and he never seems to stop wanting to learn from us, to challenge us, and to give back in many ways. As a university, we seek this type of fluidity among our business leaders, our thought leaders, and our students.”



SimplyCast is a web-based, marketing platform designed to create, track and deliver targeted online marketing campaigns such as email, survey, event, autoresponder, fax, SMS, Twitter and link tracking services. A third scholarship, also for $500, has been named for Mr. William Ritchie, SimplyCast's Chairman of the Board.