A stimulating and awe-inspiring session by Dr. Kamran Shams, CEO – Punjab Educational Endowment Fund (PEEF), was hosted by the LUMS Development Team on March 29, 2018, the sixth in a series of events titled, Leaders at LUMS.
Mr. Adeel Hashmi, the famous media personality and moderator of the session, opened the discussion by asking about PEEF, to which Dr. Shams replied, “I have at least 3,00,000 success stories and I can recall that a son of a person who is a worker at TEVTA, is now Assistant Engineer at NEDC. He has worked towards an engineering degree from UET.”
He added that PEEF is an organisation that is process driven and strictly works on documented policies. He talked about the transparent procedures and governance systems at the organisation and attributed it to a 100% automation, data-driven model where there is an electronic transfer of payments with strict external and internal audits being conducted on a regular basis. He further told that meetings are conducted at regular intervals with beneficiaries and their parents as a part of disbursement policy to ensure transparency.
He added that PEEF offers scholarships to students from matric to PhD for studying in top 50 universities according to QS rankings. He claimed that not even a single scholarship at PEEF is given on anybody’s recommendation and that solely merit prevails there.
Dr. Shams, who is also the Director of Akhuwat, currently the largest microfinance provider in Pakistan in terms of active number of loans, shared a remarkable piece of information about the return percentage which has never gone below 99.93% in the 17 year working history of the organisation.
Answering a question about leadership, Dr. Shams said, “The person who wants to be a leader should have [some] purpose, because without a purpose, nobody will follow you. Secondly, a leader should have the ability to inspire people for that purpose. This is only possible if his meaningfulness is exactly the same as the meaningfulness of the other person. This is actually sharing a vision.”
Syed Babar Ali, Pro-Chancellor LUMS, in his closing remarks thanked the honourable guest for the wonderful discussion and told the audience that there literally is no age limit to learning. He said, “I am the oldest person sitting here. I am 91 years old and I am still learning. The reason I am here is to learn from Dr. Shams what I can do better tomorrow.”
The session concluded with Syed Babar Ali presenting a commemorative shield to Dr. Shams.
