New Opportunities in a New Country
Abdalla Osman was born in Somalia, raised in Kenya, and for much of his life dreamed of moving to America. “Growing up in Kenya, there isn’t much future unless you come from a well-established family,” Osman says. Using what money he had, Osman relocated to Minneapolis in 2005. He took up a job in the neighborhood Kmart, but quickly discovered making $7 an hour wasn’t enough to support himself as well as his family back in Kenya. To make more money, he left for Chicago to work as a cab driver.
Although the pay was better, Osman couldn’t get over the feeling of being stuck in a career without future prospects. “I had no educational background and no other experience,” he says. Osman decided to enroll in some English as a second language classes and, eventually in 2014, move back to Minneapolis to be with his new wife.
Osman wasn’t yet sure what career he wanted for himself. “I didn’t have a plan,” he admits. Even to this day, Osman likens his life approach to train-hopping. “I was jumping from one train to another,” he said. “If it worked I’d stay on that train, but if it didn’t I’d jump to another.”
His pursuit for a better life led him to Metropolitan State University, where he enrolled in classes that struck his interest. “I didn’t know what to do, so I took an economics course,” says Osman. “I liked it, except [to continue in] economics you have to know some math.” Osman had never taken a math course in his life. In order to enroll in his first precalculus class, “I realized I needed to take all of these courses,” Osman says. To prepare for his placement test, he poured dozens of hours into learning algebra and prerequisite material in a short span of time. Ultimately, it paid off. In May 2018, Osman received his bachelor’s in mathematics and economics with a minor in statistics.
Yet Osman’s hunger to learn wasn’t satiated. After some searching, Osman enrolled in the M.S. in Analytics program offered by the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Minnesota. “What I liked is it takes all of these backgrounds—economics, applied math, and statistics—and puts them together into production,” says Osman.
As an analytics student, Osman’s career aspirations started to take shape. He enjoyed the classes he was taking, but didn’t know to which industry he could apply his growing skillset. Then one day Professor William Cooper shared with Osman information about an internship opportunity at US Bank. “I liked it right away,” says Osman about his internship experience there. “It combined several things I enjoy doing, including modeling, programming, dealing with data, and connecting it all with the economy.”
What he learned at his internship and in the Analytics Track led to three job offers before Osman had his degree in hand. In the end, he took an offer from Wells Fargo, where he officially started in June. At Wells Fargo, Osman works as a Quantitative Analytics Specialist. His role is relatively new within the banking system. In response to the Great Recession of 2008, the Federal Reserve now requires banks to stringently forecast commercial losses, according to Osman. He and his team use forecasting models to predict whether a company could default on a loan.
Looking back at his journey from Somalia to Kenya, and now to his new life in America, Osman hopes his story would influence others. “The beauty is that with a rough background you can still accomplish your dreams,” says Osman. “The analytics program changed my life more than I could have imagined.”