Blog it Forward – Foroohar Rafiei

Hello Everyone,

A special thanks to James Rapp for blogging this my way and giving me the opportunity to introduce myself to SCN.  You can have a look at the entire Blog It Forward (BIF) Chain to see just how pervasive this has been.

By way of introduction

I was born in Tehran the capital city of Iran and immigrated to Vancouver BC in Canada at the end of 2005. I began my journey with a company called Crystal Decisions in 2003 therefore more than 10 years and after 2 acquisitions I am working at SAP enjoying my role more than ever. Besides work, I enjoy hiking, skiing, and most of the outdoor activities and my personal hobby is cooking.

The picture below is me at the top of one of the Pyramids in the outskirts of Mexico City during our time there when we delivered one of our in persion BI Elite workshops.

My role at SAP

I currently work in the Products & Innovations (P&I) group as a Technical Expert in the Business Intelligence realm with a focus on Installation and the Analytics areas for more than 10 years.

In 2013 I had the opportunity to travel around the world (Singapore, Sydney, Bogota, Mexico City, St. Leon-Rot, and Newtown Square) to deliver BI Elite Hands on workshops to approximately 300 Customers, partners and colleages. I was also part of a team of experts that contributed to the first BI course hosted on the openSAP platform called “BI 4 Platform Innovation and Implementation”. Although a lots of time and effort was put into it, the results were amazing and it was a fantastic experience to share some of the knowledge I have accumulated over the years.

My team now does co-innovation projects with customers who are making SAP HANA an integral component of their enterprise, and we have a chance to influence their use of the HANA platform and all the benefits that comes with it.  I have started learning HANA Modeling and Data Provisioning, and am excited to put some of these new skills into practice in 2014!

Something interesting about me

I’d love to travel and with any opportunity that I’ll get I will be on the road. Below I am enjoying a fantastic day in the streets of Sao Luis’s (Brasil) downtown.

I also enjoy Vancouver very much as it is a great city with a fantastic culture. I live next to the Ocean and can be on top a Mountain skiing in almost 40 minutes.

What superpower would you like to have, and why?

I am going to be greedy here and want them all, if there is such a thing as a super power. Does anyone know how to obtain them?

If you were a flavor of ice cream, what would you be?

I would possibly be Apple Butter Ice Cream since it has a mellow taste but it is hard to forget.

If you were a chef at my restaurant, what would you cook?

Although I am not Brazilian, I would cook Fejoada. This is one of my favorite dishes of all.

I would like to blog it forward to my colleague Harjeet Judge.