Most people see careers as ladders to climb. Mohamed Isa sees them as mountains to explore. In this episode, Mohamed shares his remarkable journey from working as a cleaner in a bank to becoming the youngest CFO of a publicly listed company in Bahrain. Along the way, he learned that success isn’t about following a predetermined path—it’s about taking calculated risks, continually reinventing yourself, and creating opportunities where others see limitations.

JR and Mohamed explore:

• How a cleaning job became the foundation for an extraordinary career
• Why taking career risks can accelerate growth
• The difference between having a large network and having the right network
• How to think about reinvention through seven-year cycles
• Why careers don’t need to follow a linear path
• What “peak leadership” means and how to build a lasting legacy
• How mountain climbing became a powerful metaphor for life and work

This conversation is a reminder that where you start doesn’t determine where you’ll finish. Whether you’re feeling stuck, considering a career change, or simply looking for inspiration, Mohammed’s story offers a powerful perspective on what’s possible when you combine ambition with action.

Tune in every week for more episodes like this. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or follow Career Sessions wherever you’re listening.

Check out the full series of “Career Sessions, Career Lessons” podcasts here or visit pathwise.io/podcast/. A full written transcript of this episode is also available at https://pathwise.io/podcasts/https://pathwise.io/podcasts/mohamed-isa

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From Cleaner To CFO (and Beyond): Lessons On Reinvention And Risk, With Mohamed Isa

Our guest has a story that will make you rethink what is actually possible in a career. Mohamed Isa did not begin his career in a position of privilege. He began as a cleaner in a bank, working quietly and in the background, observing a world that he was not yet part of. Instead of accepting that that was his lane, he treated it as a vantage point, as a way to get himself into university and beyond. What followed was not luck. It was a series of deliberate climbs.

From those early days, Mohamed went on to build a career at Unilever, earn his CPA, and eventually become the youngest CFO of a publicly listed company in Bahrain in his late twenties. On paper, it looks like a pretty straight ascent, but as you will hear, the reality was a lot more complex, filled with reinvention and resets and things like that. Mohamed is not somebody who just climbed the ladder.

He actually questions whether the ladder is even the right metaphor. He talks about reinvention in cycles, about treating life more like a series of experiments, and about operating in what he calls your peak leadership mode. Most interestingly, he often compares the whole journey to climbing a mountain, not just reaching the summit, but knowing when it is time to choose a different one. We are going to talk about that journey from cleaner to CFO, from structure to experimentation, from success to reinvention.

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Mohamed, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much, JR.

The Early Experience As A Bank Cleaner

It is good to have you. Let us dive right in. I know from our past discussions that you started your career working as a cleaner at a bank. What do you remember most vividly about those days? At that point, did you have any sense of where life might take you?

I remember the cleaning job very vividly. I remember going to a point where the bus would come and pick us up from the diplomatic tower and the diplomatic area in Bahrain. We would go to clean two floors in the bank. It was an investment bank. I cannot remember the name, but it was an investment bank. We would normally go from 6:00 PM to 10:00 PM. Most of the staff would be out, but some of the hardworking staff would be there, and they were all dressed nicely, wearing ties and looking very elegant. We were just in different types of overalls. We did not have a uniform.

That was funny for me. A company should have a uniform. I remember going there and vacuuming the carpets, cleaning the windows and making them very shiny, just like my head, if you can see. Collecting the mugs from the tables and washing them. The funny thing is, I did not wash the toilets. That was good. It was not part of my job description, but being serious, even if I had to wash the toilets, I would have washed the toilets because, after all, this is the job I had to do to get money to go to university. That was the main objective.

Get some money into my pockets so that I can buy some new clothing, shoes and other things. In high school, you could just wear anything and go to school. In university, you want to give the right impression. In fact, I had a strategy. I do not know how I came up with that strategy. I was very elegant in my dress. I had all these not-so-expensive shirts, and I bought a few ties, so when I went to university, all the professors thought I was working for a bank. My treatment was different from that of the other classmates I had, and that was the start of my career.

Cleaning, I did not see it as something shameful. I thought I had to do what I had to do, as simple as that. The staff, one of them in particular, was very polite and he was very recognising. One night, I had the courage to ask him, “What do you think I should join? Should I get a bachelor’s degree in management or in accounting?” He gave me the most beautiful answer. He said, “Regardless of your degree, make the most out of it.” That was advice I will never forget.

Did you know at that point that you wanted to have a career like the one that you have had, or did it still feel distant to you?

To my surprise, I had decided to become an accountant at the age of thirteen. Let me tell you the story. I have a preferred uncle, and he used to be a volleyball player. He used to get all these fancy shirts, T-shirts and shoes. I was the tallest one in the family, and I would get all these T-shirts. Not only that, I would sneak into his room and sometimes just steal some candies and chewing gum. One time, I saw a career guide published by the Rotary clubs in Bahrain, and it had the title, the job description and what qualifications you needed.

At the bottom of the page, there was the salary. Because in our family, cash was so tight, I was just looking at the salaries and flipping through the pages. At that time, the accountants made the most money. I looked up the title of the page, accountant, and I thought, “This is me.” When it was time to select my stream in high school, I did not go into science. I went to commerce. Eventually, I obtained my bachelor’s degree in accounting. The career choice was made early on, literally based on the money.

Becoming The Youngest CFO At Twenty-Six

Fair enough. I think that is probably how a lot of kids decide what they want to do, or at least come up with an initial idea of what they want to do. You ended up becoming the youngest CFO of a publicly listed company in Bahrain. Walk us through how you got from that kid cleaning offices in an investment bank and then going to university to becoming the youngest public company CFO.

It happened in a very nice way, and the sequence was very simple. I worked at Unilever for a few years. I came back to Bahrain, and I joined Gulf International Bank and I joined for a very brief period, only two months. Someone from Bahrain, whom I met in Jeddah when I was based in Jeddah, working with Unilever, gave me the hint about the CFO job. He said, “Give me your CV. I will pass it to the team, and hopefully it will work out.”

I was very reluctant because when I was growing up, we had this advice. You should stay in a job for a certain period. You should not be jumping from one job to another. I was from that school. When he hung up, I thought I would never send him the CV. He called in the afternoon. He said, “Where is your CV?” I sent the CV, and at that time, I used to have a Yahoo account. I still remember the email exactly word for word. “Dear Ali, although I am not very excited about this, please find my CV. Regards, Mohamed.”

I received a call immediately from Ali, and he said, “Just tell me, should I pass it or not?” I said pass it, and that is how I went into the interviews. We had three rounds of interviews. I met the chairman, the CEO, the outgoing CFO, the investment director, and the property development director. I had so many signs from God not to join that company. Just give you one example, or maybe two. The day I had my second interview, I was waiting next to the building. I received a message from the investment director saying that the wife of the CEO is having labour.

We were rescheduling the meeting, and I thought, “That is a sign.” I went back to the bank, and that day, Bahrain experienced what we know as Black Monday, where there was an electricity outage. I thought, “This is another sign from God not to join this company.” I thought, “I am just making this up in my mind.” The first sign was that I was going through another interview, but this time the company wanted to take me and show me the assets they owned.

One of them was a man-made island called Tala. We were there in a four-wheel Jeep, and we got stuck in the mud. I thought, “Now this is a sign.” The CEO was so good. He said, “How about this day in the office?” I felt I could work with this gentleman. If he had this incident and he is making fun, I can work with that. Despite all these signs, I said, “Let me go and try this out.” I ended up staying there for more than eleven years.

What is interesting to me about that story is how persistent they were in keeping you pulled in because a lot of companies, a lot of people, like the guy that you sent your CV to, he could have just said, well, you do not seem very interested in this. I am not going to use my own personal capital to help you unless you are really committed. He pushed you into it anyway.

I am very thankful to him to this day.

How did you get from Unilever to becoming the CFO of a publicly listed company?

In Unilever, I had a strategy because I knew if I stayed very long in Unilever, I would not be coming back to Bahrain. I wanted to come back to Bahrain. My strategy was that when I passed the CPA exams, I would come to Bahrain. I had made two calls, one to a friend of mine who was working in the Gulf International Bank, and another to someone who was working with what we now know as our capital. I had two job interviews on the same day. One clicked immediately, the recruiting manager, the VP, she was not there to test my knowledge or anything.

She was fascinated by the work I did with Unilever. She was saying, “Tell me more about this and that.” I just got the offer on the second day. I just told you how I went from GIB to the investment bank. It was a very risky decision. All my career decisions were risky. Leaving Bahrain was risky. Leaving Unilever, a very well-established company, to join a bank in Bahrain was a risky move. Going from the bank to a newly started company, that was risky, but I think I have always been able to have this mindset. So what?

Let me try. Let us find out what happens. All the time, I had these friends whom I trusted. I called someone from Oman. His name is Nazar. We used to work together at Unilever. I told him about this jump because I was a credit analyst at Gulf International Bank. Jumping from a credit analyst to CFO, that is a big jump. He had asked me a smart question. He said, “Do you think you have a 30% chance of succeeding? I told him, “I think more than that.” He said, “Just do it.” That is what I did. That is how I became the youngest CFO of a publicly traded company in the Gulf. I was 26 at that time.

The Importance Of Cultivating A Strategic Network

As you went from your pre-university job to university and to Unilever into that CFO job, were there times that you felt like you were in over your head and did not really belong in the track that you were in?

I did not feel that. The reason is that I always did my homework. I always had calls with people outside the company to ask for tips, for advice. For example, when I was a CFO for the first time, I had to deal with external auditors, and I had never dealt with external auditors in my life. Yes, I dealt with internal auditors. I called my previous manager, whose name is Majeed, and I said, “Man, these guys are coming within three weeks. What should I do?”

He just kept telling me to do this and this. This is what I used to do, cultivating contacts and then using these contacts to help me succeed in my career. I attribute whatever I have reached today to my contacts, and I can name these individuals who have shaped my career. One time, I did a trail and I ended up having only eight people take me to where I am today. People think you need to have a very big network. I do not think so. You need to have the right network.

I think you are highlighting the importance of having a few people in your network who will really go to bat for you, to use an American expression, who will open doors for you, create opportunities, and back you when you need it. It is sponsorship, right? That goes beyond a network, goes beyond mentorship, having that level of sponsorship. The fact that you can pinpoint back to eight people who created opportunities for you is a really good thing and probably something not a lot of people would be able to do in terms of having that level of sponsorship.

I totally agree with you. Sometimes I think I am lucky, but sometimes I tell myself, this is not luck. You have been working. I remember when I was a CFO, we had the annual report of the company, and I enjoyed writing the CEO message and the chairman’s message myself. I did not give it to an agency or a marketing department. I used to write them myself. To issue the 2004 annual report, the CEO told me, “I like this, but I need something at the end.” I said, “What do you need?” He said, “I need an inspirational quote.” I said, “Let me find something for you.” I shortlisted ten inspirational quotes for him. He chose this one. It said, “Luck is a preparation meeting opportunity,” as simple as that.

It is a good way of describing it. It is about creating your own luck. You were doing that.

I am sure you have heard this phrase or expression, “If they do not invite you to the table, build your own table.”

You got your CPA along the way as well. What led to the decision to get that, and why did you decide to get it?

When we grew up, the general plan for us, the accounting students, was to work for a Big Four company and then clear the CPA exams, stay with them for five years and then jump into banking. That was the general plan. For me, Unilever was advocating other qualifications, CMA, Certified Management Accountant, and CIMA, which is the UK version of the UK. I was not inclined to go to the UK because the journey is very long.

In the CPA, you get four exams, and in the UK version, you get fourteen. Why should you go for fourteen? The decision was very clear. I was a very research-oriented student. I used to visit the public library we had in the university, and we used to get The Economist and Business Week. I would go to these magazines, and I would see the advertisements, how many times the CPA would come and how many times the ACCA would come. Ultimately, the CPA was more in demand at that time. That was the decision. Pursuing whatever I saw in that little career guide, I was just going full speed.

Was getting your CPA about building your own capabilities? Was it about conveying credibility in the space by having the certification, or was it about giving you confidence that you had that knowledge of accounting?

We had a very strong bachelor’s degree program at the University of Bahrain. The CPA was not something difficult for me. Yes, it had the taxation, which we did not study, but I know many people who do not have professional qualifications who are performing at the highest level. I can imagine the previous manager I had, Majeed, whom I consulted for the auditors. He does not have a professional qualification, but he is that kind of guy who knows what he is doing. Sometimes, the only reason you get the qualification is for the other side to have confidence in you, for the other side to see the credibility. I know many people who do not have professional qualifications, and they are doing very well. Does it help? It tells a lot.

I think sometimes, certainly, there are fields where having a professional certification is a requirement. As for practising medicine as an example, there are other fields like coaching, which would be a good example where having the certification may or may not be important to you. If you are able to build a client base without it, then it does not really matter. If you feel like you need the training or need the credibility to build your client base, then it becomes important. A CPA is probably somewhere in between. It is certainly in some places, like if you wanted to work for a Big Four, they are certainly going to push you to get your CPA. To be a CFO of a firm, it may or may not matter.

Depending on the sector, even in Bahrain, the central bank, they will have its own qualification requirements. You cannot be ahead of a department if you do not have this or that. For whoever is watching this or tuning in to this, you need to know the profession you are entering. You need to know what the requirements are. You need to know, you need to study, you need to ask. That is what I am trying to say.

The Seven-Year Cycle Of Career Reinvention

Let us talk a little bit more about some of the things you have done since then. I know you are a big believer in reinvention. You talk about the seven-year cycle. Where did that come from?

That seven-year cycle came from the story of Prophet Joseph. When he was installed as the treasurer of Egypt, he had this idea that the harvest would last for seven years, and after the harvest, there would be a drought. He managed the situation over there. Seven years are enough for someone to reinvent themselves, and you cannot reinvent yourself overnight. Seven years is a good time. If you are changing careers, you will need to establish yourself in seven years. If you are going out on your own as an entrepreneur, it will not happen overnight.

You need to be very patient. Seven years is a very good time to reinvent. I like reinvention because you can be the same person 20, 30 years from now, but what is the point? One of the most beautiful expressions that I have heard in my life was by someone called Ralph Zangara. He was in a documentary film. He said this, and it fully resonated with me back in 1998. He said, “We are a gift from God. What we become is a gift to God.”

Talk a little bit about how you have reinvented yourself over the years.

You have the cleaner, you have the student, you have the Unilever regional finance manager, then you have the credit analyst, and then you have the CFO. After the CFO, I am now a speaker, an author, and a traveller. That is what I do. In between, I do coaching, consulting, and sit on boards. Sometimes I sit on the boards of companies. Sometimes I sit on boards of professional associations. Now I am sitting on the Bahrain Customer Experience Association and the Bahrain Management Association. As I said, we need to cultivate a diverse set of experiences.

I do not want to be that person when you meet me in the future, and you tell me how many years of experience you have, and I say 25, for example. In reality, it is just one multiplied by 25 years. I cannot tolerate that. That is why reinvention is very important to me. I do not know what will happen next, because now I am pursuing mountains and pursuing speaking. Yesterday I was tuning in to your latest episode. You said something very important. You said, “If you are under 55, you still have many jobs to come.” I thought, “Yes, why not? Fifty-five is young.”

We are living longer. We are going to be working longer. It changes the dynamic. You do not have to work for the same company or in the same profession anymore. Some people want to do the same thing. I was just staying at an inn in England, and the innkeeper had been doing that job for 37 years. That is a long time. That is what he wanted to do. There are others, and I probably would count myself among them, who like to do different things every so often. It comes back to whether it is a seven-year cycle or whatever. For me, that just keeps me energised. It does not have to be this ladder. It does not have to be this if you want it to be.

I have a book over here that is called The 100-Year Life. They predict it will be normal for us to live until a hundred. What would you do if you lived to a hundred? We need to think about that.

For some people, that means they will have a longer retirement. They can afford it. For other people, it means they are going to need to work longer. That is something that we are all contemplating right now. Fifty-five is really not that old.

It boils down to what personality you have. Are you an adventurous person or are you a play-it-safe person? Let me just sit down here, I am getting a good salary, everyone respects me in this job, so why bother? There is nothing wrong or right. It is just the personality.

Talk about some of the topics that you write and speak about. I know you have written quite a bit.

I wrote about public speaking, customer experience, and leadership, but my first book was about investor relations. It was the first book about that subject in the Middle East. As a CFO, I practised investor relations, and I studied it or researched it in my MBA, and I converted my MBA into a book. We were pioneering. I am very proud to say that I am not being boastful over here, but other companies were just copying what we were doing. I was practising. I was writing about it, and I was a practitioner at the same time. I like to write about practical things. I do not like to give theories. You need to give people what they need to succeed, as simple as that.

How many books have you written at this point?

The published ones are 21. We are printing one next week, and I am printing another one, which documents my ten-year journey outside the corporate world. In May, it is called No Title No Limit. Initially, I thought, let me write a ten-article series about what I did since I left, and I will share them on my blog and on LinkedIn. As I evolved, when I reached article eight, I thought, no, I should be expanding all of this. I doubled the count of words, and I increased it from 10 to 14 chapters, plus the intro and the closing of the book. In essence, this is a book I want to hand to my children, my nephews, my nieces as a way to inspire them because now they see what I have. They do not know what I went through. I write to help people.

It is good that you are demonstrating for the next generation in your family what is possible, what you can achieve.

Last night I was attending an online course. It was the US time, so it was very late for me, but I kept just pushing myself to not sleep. They said something very interesting. They said business is a belief. If you have the belief, then business will work. The same principle applies to our careers, to our lives. If you believe the thing, and if you work for it, you will achieve it. That is what I want to show them. Everything is possible.

Mountain Climbing As A Motivator For Life

You use mountain climbing analogies in the speaking that you are doing. What does the climb represent to you in terms of your life and your career?

The climb represents energy. The climb represents passion. The climb represents challenging yourself. One way of getting to work out and be more physical is to have a mountain in my head that I want to climb. That is the motivation. I know I have to generate more funds to go, so I have to work harder to get more speaking engagements, and that is the mountain. For me, it is the biggest driver of my life as we speak, the mountains. I am pursuing the Seven Summits challenge, where I have to climb the highest mountains on each of the continents.

In the US, it would be Mount Denali in Alaska. Being fit, having the money, and enjoying the journey, writing about it, I am telling you, this all started with a two-week expedition to Everest Base Camp back in 2022. Those two weeks, it changed my life, and I fully mean it. I am writing an adventurous novel. It is called The Summit of Unity, where six climbers from the Gulf States go on a climb to Everest. I never read a novel in my life, so this is what the mountain did. The other thing I have is the Speak Leadership model. The research is now around 290 pages.

I can have a one-day workshop or twelve days of training on the methodology I developed. This is reinvention. When you have a passion for something, good things will happen. The other day, I was visiting my mom, and I was talking to Claude AI, and I said, “Go and search what are the books are available about Everest in Arabic, not in English.” It turned out there was only one, and I know the author of that book. Immediately, I thought, “This is my opportunity. Let me write not only about Everest, but also about this is the twist I have that most others do not have. I have the executive experience, I have the mountaineering experience, and I have the writing experience.”

My next target for this year is to write my first Arabic book. Not in my imagination, I thought I would write an Arabic book, because I always write in English. Because of the mountain, now I am writing an Arabic book, and it will be something totally different. I will be distilling the history of Mount Everest for the last hundred years in one book. With each chapter, you will have a leadership lesson at the end. It will be something totally different, not available in the market. This is what I want people to find. What they are passionate about. Find the thing that will make you work day and night without being tired.

Defining Peak Leadership And Leaving A Legacy

Is that what peak leadership is for you, or is it something different?

Peak leadership for me is leaving a legacy. This is the top of my peak leadership model, leaving a legacy, just like the book I am writing now for my children, my nieces, and my nephews. What legacy do you want? Do you want to be the trailblazer? Do you want to be that person who came on this earth and left it without anyone noticing? That is peak leadership. Start with self-leadership, because if you cannot lead yourself, you cannot lead others. That model has six different levels of leadership capabilities and ultimately leaves a legacy.

Leaving a legacy is something that I think a lot about at this point in my career, because there are, in all likelihood, more years behind me than there are ahead of me from a professional standpoint, at least. You start to think you have limited shots left. What are you going to do with that time? How do you make sure it has as much impact as possible? It is why I started to do Pathwise and this podcast, and all of us want to leave some form of legacy. Some of us are more committed to it than others. Some of us take more action than others.

It is great that you are doing this beautifully, J.R. I am not sure how many people you are inspiring because, as you know, all people will come and comment on your show or like it, but I am telling you, your impact is more than what you imagine.

All of us can have some impact, right? The size of the ripple effect that we create. Some people create a large ripple effect and leave a true impact on the world, positively or negatively. Other people leave a smaller ripple effect, but all those ripple effects add up. That is what advances humanity.

That is the compounding effect.

For somebody who is tuning into this and feeling stuck in their career, what would you tell them that they should be thinking about in terms of driving towards some form of reinvention?

Call someone, meet someone, sit with them, share with them. What are your worries? What are your feelings? What is happening in your life? Tell them where you want to go. Two days ago, I was talking to someone. He wants to take over his father’s business, and he wants to pick my mind on this. I said, “I need two things from you. I need you to think like a dentist. Show me the picture with the broken teeth, with cavities, and then show me the Hollywood smile.” If you know these two points, then you can work out the details.

If you do not have any idea of where you are going or what you want to do, it would be very difficult, or even for well-intended people to help you. You can have access to people who can help you, but you need to have that clarity about where you want to go. From there, you start calling people, having coffee with them. I had so many coffee conversations, and some of these coffee conversations led to business opportunities. If you are stuck, get unstuck, do something. Do not wait.

Sitting around waiting for something to happen to you is usually not a recipe for success. Last question, if you were going to go back and talk to that version of yourself who was cleaning that bank as a teenager, what would you tell them?

I would tell him you are in for so many surprises, good ones and bad ones. At the end, just enjoy the journey.

Good advice. Mohamed, thank you for doing this. I appreciate what you are doing and what you are aspiring to do in terms of the legacy that you leave and the impact that you have in your speaking and your writing.

Thank you so much. It was my pleasure. I wish all the audiences, the viewers, all the best in their career transitions and their career growth, and take charge.

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What are the practical takeaways from my discussion just now with Mohamed? First, where you start your career definitely does not define your ceiling. This is probably the most important point, but how you respond to the opportunities that are put in front of you is really important. Think about Muhamed’s own story that he talked about in terms of his transition into Unilever and from Unilever into the company that he ultimately became the CFO of. It was not just about ambition, but it was also about awareness, discipline, and purposeful action, about listening to opportunities that were presented to him. He did not just wait. He studied, he prepared, and he stepped into things as they came to him.

Second is that careers are not singular. They are not just a steady climb up a ladder. To his point, they are cycles of reinvention, whether seven years or otherwise. One of his central theses is that our careers need not be linear. Every few years, you ought to be IRS-assessing and relearning and sometimes starting over, as I have done and he has done over the course of his career. People who thrive long-term are the ones who lean into that and are willing to evolve and not just keep doing the same thing again and again and again.

Third is that ownership is the difference between drifting and building. Rather than letting his career happen to him, Mohamed made intentional choices, whether pursuing a CPA, shifting into leadership, or jumping into something that he was perhaps more than 30% confident in, but certainly not 100% confident in. All of that mindset of ownership, as he said, compounds over time. Finally, peak performance is about the legacy that you leave.

It is about continuing to grow, to learn, and try, test, and adapt. His mountain climbing analogy reinforces that success is not always about one perfect path to that summit. Sometimes it is about choosing different climbs, about learning, about adapting. Sometimes it is about learning when to turn back because that summit might not be right for you, or the conditions might not be right for you. As always, I invite you to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. If you found this discussion enlightening, please sign up for my membership community, which is called Pathwise, and our newsletter, PathWisdom. Thanks. See you next time.

Important Links

• Mohamed Isa on LinkedIn
• The 100-Year Life
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About Mohamed Isa

An internationally recognized keynote speaker who inspires, engages, and transforms, Mohamed Isa energizes audiences worldwide with heart-moving stories and performance-driving strategies. Known for his dynamic style and relatable storytelling, he delivers experiences that stay with audiences long after the applause fades.

As an award-winning keynote speaker, Amazon bestselling author, and former CFO, Mohamed bridges the worlds of business and inspiration with effortless credibility. Fluent in Arabic and English, he connects with audiences across cultures, empowering leaders and teams to think higher, act faster, and achieve more. With expertise in leadership, employee engagement, and customer service, Mohamed delivers content-rich keynotes that combine practical business insight with authentic storytelling. His sessions are not just motivational; they create measurable change and help organizations strengthen culture, performance, and purpose.

What sets Mohamed apart is how he lives the lessons he teaches. From standing at Everest Base Camp to summiting Mount Kilimanjaro and trekking Mount Kosciuszko, his expeditions mirror the challenges leaders face every day. His attempt on Mount Elbrus reminded him that leadership is not only about reaching the top but also about knowing when to pause, adapt, and protect the team.

Before becoming a full-time speaker and trainer, Mohamed built a distinguished corporate career. As Chief Financial Officer of a dual-listed investment bank, he managed a balance sheet exceeding USD 500 million. He led transactions worth more than USD 350 million in exits, equity, and debt financing. He has served on multiple boards, mentored startups, and advised Fortune 500 companies, bringing a wealth of practical experience to every stage he steps on.

Consistently praised for his energy, clarity, and authenticity, Mohamed Isa does more than deliver talks; he delivers results. He creates experiences that inspire people to climb their own Everest.