MURTAZA JAFFER: Hello, everyone. My name is Murtaza Jaffer. I am a proud Penn Stater and graduated at Penn State Lehigh Valley in 2002. I'm originally from Tanzania, East Africa, and moved here in the mid-'90s, in 1996, and started coming to the United States. My main goal of my parents was getting their kids educated in America. So this was our American Dream. 

So since then, I've been here. I chose Penn State Lehigh Valley because it was close to where my family lived, here in the Lehigh Valley. We lived in Whitehall first, and now we live in Allentown. So it was very close to home. 

During my time here at Penn State Lehigh Valley, I always had the interest of operating a small business, along with my family as well. They had the interest of having a business here. And I decided to major in business administration with a concentration in marketing. So that really helped me kind of cultivate me to start my own business. 

My brother, who's my partner in business, has an accounting background, while myself, with a marketing background. And we thought that mixing these two ideologies of having an accounting background and marketing would be beneficial to the small business that we wanted to launch. 

When I graduated from Penn State Lehigh Valley, my brother graduated from Lehigh University, we both went into the corporate world to gain some experience. My brother worked for a local company in the finance department, a company that produced semiconductor chips in the area. And I started working for a mid-sized manufacturing company in New York. 

Within the third month of the dream job, I get a phone call from my brother saying that he misses me. So I come over that one weekend, home. And over a Sunday breakfast, I turn The Morning Call newspaper, and I see this copy center/print shop going for sale. 

So we look at each other. And we say, hey, do you want to go check this business out? And we said, OK, let's go. So I took off that Monday. We took a look at the business. And when we went into the business, it was a completely rundown business. 

However, the couple that wanted to sell this business, we fell in love with them. They were just the kindest people we've met. And they said, look, we know that our business is not up to par, and we don't have the latest technology. But we're looking for a good faith acquisition here. And so we did. 

We quit our corporate jobs. And we started operating this print shop with no background experience, with no experience in the printing industry. We just started. And today, we have been a successful print shop here in the Lehigh Valley, where we're producing all sorts of marketing materials. We print signage, promotional products, and apparel. 

And I attest this success to some of the foundation and the education that I've gained at Penn State Lehigh Valley. Most importantly, the relationships that were made here at Penn State Lehigh Valley is what attest my success to, especially my professors. 

I realized that I enjoyed connecting with people. And ever since I moved into the United States, I've always felt welcomed by the community here. As a matter of fact, when I started high school here, coming into America, I felt like a celebrity, watching all those movies and sitcoms. I told my friends back home, hey, I'm going to America. And I was so proud about it. 

And I remember the first class when I went into high school here in the Lehigh Valley. I had a completely different picture of what a high school is going to look like. But the first person that I heard a voice from from the side as I sat down in my chair was somebody speaking Arabic to me. And that just blew my mind that somebody in America would speak Arabic to me. 

That individual is still my friend today. And I didn't realize that the Lehigh Valley community has a large population of Syrian Christians and Lebanese Christians. So I was very fortunate to be welcomed like that and made a lot of friendships like that. 

Because of this and just being connected with the community, getting involved in different activities, especially at Penn State Lehigh Valley-- where I was with student government, I joined the tennis team, and took much pride in the classes that I was involved with-- that really pushed me to look at the marketing degree. And that was the main reason why. It's just those community interactions, the activities that I got involved with, and knowing the fact that one day, I want to be in an entrepreneurial role. That is what pushed me to go into a marketing role, specifically. 

When I started working at our print shop, I started working on the machines. And knowing that I had a marketing background, my brother, who was my partner, having an accounting background-- being a small business, you kind of dabble into many different things. You do many different things, especially when you're starting off. 

But as our business grew and I surrounded with very talented and very caring people, the team that I created allowed me to get out there in the community. As a matter of fact, my own manager kind of fired me from my job and said that, hey, Murtaza, you need to be out in the community promoting our company and bringing in marketing initiatives and partnering with vendors that will help us from a marketing standpoint. 

So I took her advice very seriously and started promoting our company. And my daily activity is basically that-- marketing our company, being in a business development role, working with our vendors and seeking their advice on how we can promote our small business. Also, getting involved with the community is a huge part of what I do. 

I volunteer at many non-profit organizations. I'm a member of the Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce. I sit on their executive board. And I sit on many different chambers within the Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce on their board of directors, which allows me to connect with the community and also build relationships within the community. 

The biggest challenge, especially from a small business perspective, is that I want to do a little bit of everything, especially when it comes to marketing my business. I want to be on TV, I want to be on radio-- every medium that you look at. It's very exciting to be part of every medium. 

However, for a small business, it can be challenging, especially from a cost perspective, that you can't do everything. However, what you can do is you can gauge yourself and maybe start off at an entry level. So for example, from a digital marketing standpoint, our company-- ebcprinting.com-- is an e-commerce setup. 

So from a digital marketing standpoint, we partnered with a really good advertising agency to help us promote our company. But we're also looking into other mediums, such as TV. We have a great TV anchor here in the Lehigh Valley called WFMZ. We have a great billboard company called Adams Outdoor here in the Lehigh Valley that, at some point, we want to partner with these companies so that we can promote our small business. 

So after many years of being an alumni at Penn State Lehigh Valley, serving on the advisory board here at the campus, and just being a full-time supporter for the campus, the campus awarded me with an Alumni Award in 2019. And my own Professor, Dr. Denise Ogden, presented me with that award. 

It's truly one of the proudest moments in my life. And I thank Denise Ogden, I thank the campus, for this award. And I will continue to support and promote all the initiatives that Penn State Lehigh Valley is trying to do for the betterment--