With plans of pursuing studies in law, Nubaira Kabir is a Client Service and Sales admin at Ardeo Education Solutions with a background as a tax intern with Jenner & Block, LLP. Employing advanced digital aids, she tracked and updated taxes on invoiced data spanning clients and vendors. Nubaira Kabir also performed property tax adjustments such as depreciation and disposals for office assets, and interpreted tax deductions in areas such as employee reimbursements.
Ms. Kabir has a strong interest in preparing dishes that range from Italian to Asian cuisine. She is presently working to launch a baking company centered on products containing allulose. This form of sugar avoids the negative health effects of refined sugar, while tasting and baking the same. Ms. Kabir’s hospitality experience includes a past role as hostess at Cooper’s Hawk Winery & Restaurant. She communicated closely with managers, servers, and customers, and ensured a seamless lunch and dinner service.
Nubaira Kabir’s experience extends to the sales realm, and she interned with Echo Global Logistics in Chicago. Researching US customer segments and markets, she gained insight into specific logistics needs and reestablished relationships with inactive clients. Fitness-focused, she enjoys activities such as yoga and Pilates in her free time.
What is your typical day, and how do you make it productive?
On weekdays, I start my morning out with prayer and an hour-long treadmill session at 5:30. I go to work at around 7:30 am, and I am there until 5:00 pm. At my job, I do not have an idle moment. My job allows for a lot of self-development, so it’s filled with skill-building or ways to help others out with projects. After 5:00 pm, I go home and study for the LSAT for at least two hours. I end my day with another workout and go to bed. Every hour awake is an hour spent making my goals a reality, whether it be personal or professional. On weekends, I typically like to try a new experience. I’ve done lipstick making, candle making, Turkish lamp mosaics, perfume making, all sorts of activities. I do something that helps me relax from a week of grind but also gives me a material benefit.
How do you bring ideas to life?
By putting my heart into it. Whenever I believe in something, I believe in it hard and put in all my effort to make it a reality. And nothing is achieved by sitting and dreaming about it, procrastinating, and wasting time. If I truly want it, it will motivate me to put in the work immediately, because others all around me have done it the same way.
What’s one trend that excites you?
A trend that excites me is the emergence of fitness studios and exercise trends and anything with health and wellness. I was never athletic nor sporty and working out honestly can be a struggle sometimes, but I never feel better after leaving a workout studio. And now that it’s become so popularized, there are so many different types of workout studios for me to try and to see what works for me, and I love that there are so many different ways to create progress and a healthy lifestyle for people of all backgrounds. Pilates has definitely become one of my favorites, despite it not being as easy as it looks!
What is one habit that helps you be productive?
One habit that helps me to be productive is to listen to a podcast. It could be literally about anything, from true crime to the history of Abkhazia, but I always feel like listening to a podcast and doing something else doubles my productivity.
What advice would you give your younger self?
The advice I would give to my younger self is to stop trying to win other people’s approval. Of course, getting the right person’s approval is always important, but we as humans do not need to be approved by the stranger down the street about our outfit, our mannerisms, our appearance. They’re just random people, and their opinion is something you won’t even hear nine out of 10 times, because whatever they’re thinking stays in their head.
Tell us something you believe that almost nobody agrees with you on.
Something that almost nobody agrees with me on is that life without our technology was way better than what it is now, like in the 80s and 90s, and even the early 2000s. Granted, I wasn’t born until 2000, but I was there to witness the transition from life with some tech influence to life with all tech influence, and I wish I was able to enjoy the simplicity and human connection of the early 2000s a lot more than I can reminisce on. I know technology has added to our lives in positive ways, but I think it gave us access to a whole new world that comes with its own sets of issues.
What is the one thing you repeatedly do and recommend everyone else do?
One thing I repeatedly do is start my morning off with a walk, and I recommend everyone else do it too. Physical movement, especially when a majority of people perform a sedentary task for their employment, is extremely crucial and getting the blood circulating right when you wake up is so important. It gets you motivated, it gives your body natural caffeine, it gets your steps in for the day, and it helps your metabolism. It can also help give yourself time to reflect or think and add to productivity.
When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do?
When I feel overwhelmed or unfocused, I typically give myself 15 minutes to myself to breathe and relax. Sometimes, it may just be my brain telling me that it’s overworked, and I’d rather have a 15-minute breather than produce work that’s not made with my 100% effort and focus. Usually, 15 minutes is enough for me to regroup and take that time to myself.
What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business or advance in your career?
You must actually put in the effort to advance in your career, and the best strategy is to manage your time wisely. In this day and age, a simple scroll on social media can last hours. It’s important that you limit distractions and create a routine or a schedule that can be strictly followed. Usually, people hate routines when it’s not made by them, but when it’s made by you, you have no excuses not to follow it. Creating a schedule, even if you have nothing to follow, can be the first steppingstone to reaching goals.
What is one failure in your career, how did you overcome it, and what lessons did you take away from it?
I went through a lot of failure in my career early on, which was getting rejected from positions that I knew I was qualified from and went along with what I studied. I was obviously devastated, knowing that I no longer had a place in something I had been trying to achieve for the last four years of university, but, ultimately, adopting the mindset of “everything happens for a reason” was absolutely crucial for me to get up and move on. While I didn’t get into the field I was studying to enter, I got my foot in the door in so many other industries, like law, tax, retirement, logistics, and even higher education. Something doesn’t have to go the way you planned for things to go right, and that was the biggest takeaway.
What is one business idea you’re willing to give away to our readers?
So, I have this business idea which is to create baked goods out of a sugar called allulose. Allulose is a rare natural sugar that is found in fruits like figs and raisins. It has the same taste as sugar, and it bakes like sugar, however it doesn’t have the bad side effects of sugar, like spiking insulin levels, cavities, acne, or other things we avoid sugar for. Not many products do this, and if a product does use allulose, they usually mix it with a sugar alcohol or stevia or something other than just pure allulose. I think making a company around allulose-based products would be extremely helpful for those that are diabetic, keto, or want a sweet treat without the punishment.
What is one piece of software that helps you be productive? How do you use it?
A piece of software that helps me be productive is, believe it or not, Outlook Calendar. I use it for everything. I set reminders months in advance and get surprised whenever I see the reminder for it months later at the perfect time. I love seeing my day organized and seeing how things can be fit, moved, or forgone for the best productivity. I also love knowing that everything has a rhythm in my day and has a purpose in achieving the goals set for the day.
What is the best $100 you recently spent? What and why?
The best $100 I spent recently was on an LSAT prep course online. It was technically $69, but it personalized my study plan to fit my exact needs in what I need to study and my ideal score that I want. It also set out the dates I needed to test and the timeline of when I should apply to schools and what schools would be acceptable for me to apply to. The best thing about it is that there was no AI involved, so the personalization felt better since it was done by a human that also looked at me as a human and not a data point or a bunch of statistics.
Do you have a favorite book or podcast you’ve gotten a ton of value from and why?
My favorite book from which I have gotten a lot of value from was probably a book not known by many. It’s called “A Tunisian Tale” by Hassouna Mosbahi, and I read it after I travelled to Tunisia. At the time, Tunisia wasn’t a sought-out tourist destination like it’s becoming now, and I felt very attached to the country because it was a hidden gem and the hospitality was unmatched by any other country I’ve visited. When I read this book, I not only felt the connection back to Tunisia, but found a tragic story that was almost too relatable. Our cultures are so similar, and the struggles of what women go through remains the same, and it reminded me too that every woman goes through so much in life and are barely credited for any of the good, always blamed for all the bad.
What’s a movie or series you recently enjoyed and why?
I recently enjoyed the series “Severance” on Apple TV. There are not many forms of media these days that truly capture my attention and make me critically think about what I am consuming, but “Severance” was truly the one that did it for me after a long time. I was fascinated by the unpredictable twists and the depressive portrayal of a society that could likely happen in our lifetimes. It makes you think, question, and dig deeper as to why things are the way they are in not only their society, but our own as well.
Key learnings
- Effort drives results.
- Technology should be used as an added benefit, not a crutch.
- People are deeper than what is shown on the surface.
- Always question everything—curiosity brings innovation.
- There’s only one life, so if you fail, you have to keep going and try again.