September 22, 2021

Sustainable Homes Challenge: Meet Amir

My name is Amir and I was born in the city of Shiraz in Iran. I moved to Sydney in year 12 and then completed my Bachelor of Medical Science at UOW. I am currently studying a Graduate Certificate in Innovation and Entrepreneurship. I think I have had an entrepreneurial mindset since I was a kid; my dad remembers when I was five and I had set up a little shop on our street selling my hand painted rocks!

Since then, I have attempted different business ideas and I currently have two businesses that are active. One is X-Gen Entertainment which organises music concerts and one is X-Gen Websites, a website development business. Recently, I have been very interested in the concept of social entrepreneurship and can see myself being a social entrepreneur in the future. I believe climate change could be one the biggest challenges that we will experience in our lifetime and I want to be involved in finding solutions for overcoming this critical challenge. 

I joined this challenge because I really care about the environment and have been reading a lot about sustainability. Our natural resources are deteriorating so rapidly, and we need to act now. I have no doubts that there is a great opportunity for innovative thinkers (like us) to come up with solutions that will shape our future. I am hoping that participating in this challenge would enable me to have more knowledge around the concept of sustainability and that it would challenge me to be more innovative. I am planning to study dentistry in the future and working as a part-time dental assistant has taught me that dental practices produce a LOT of plastic waste. I have been looking into the material that could be used instead of plastic for dental instruments for example recently I bought some flossers that were made of bamboo which is a remarkable change in the market. I am hoping that by being a part of this challenge, I would have a better understanding about sustainable ways of building and operating my own future dental clinic. 

Learning about the Bloomberg building in London is such an inspiration for sustainable buildings and it shows how great the impacts of having a sustainable building can be on the environment. I also really enjoyed learning about the circular economy, and it has definitely shifted my way of thinking. Since the day that I completed the circular economy module, every time that I put something in the bin, I think about how we could reuse it for other purposes. Our learning about the Belbin model of teams was also very interesting and I have started using it with my work colleagues; it is very interesting to know that by allocating appropriate tasks to each team member, the team could be performing much more efficiently and effectively.