Student Reflection by Rayya Haider (C’27 W’27, Arabic target)
This past summer, I spent twelve weeks in Tunis, the capital of Tunisia, working at Sustainable Infra Capital (SIC). SIC is a private equity firm headquartered in Dubai that invests in sustainable infrastructure across Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. The firm has built an impressive track record – running 186MW of solar PV plants in Egypt’s Benban solar park, developing new solar projects in Kenya, building wind farms in Tunisia, and even launching a large-scale green data center in Egypt.
I joined the small but brilliant investment team as a three-month intern, working closely with two other six-month interns, our Associate, and our Senior Associates. Because the team was small, I had the opportunity to be involved in practically everything: running sensitivities on project returns, reviewing NDAs and other legal documents, checking and improving financial models, and researching costs and loan rates for global data centers. On top of that, I analyzed information memorandums and dove into all sorts of research – everything from the GPUaaS market, to infrastructure funds in the Gulf, to Egypt’s cloud policy, to Indonesia’s Independent Power Producer framework.
I first came across this internship on Penn’s GRIP website, and it immediately felt like the perfect fit. As an Arabic target in the Huntsman Program, I’ve always been drawn to finance in the Middle East, especially in the context of rapid development. I’m also deeply passionate about fighting climate change through big, scalable solutions such as renewable energy and green infrastructure. Working on SIC’s projects gave me the chance to see how these two worlds meet. For example, I got to see up close how something as complex as a green data center can be powered by renewable energy. Add to that my growing interest in private equity, and my long-standing dream to explore Tunisia and North Africa, and I knew this would be a summer I wouldn’t forget.
I definitely walked away with new technical skills: more advanced Excel, a deeper understanding of project finance cash flows, profit & loss statements, and the ins and outs of legal documents. But the learning went way beyond that. One of the
most surprising challenges I faced was a complicated Excel model that estimated renewable energy output using solar panels, the government grid, and battery storage systems. It was overwhelming at first, but it taught me how important it is to ask questions constantly and stay curious, even when the material feels out of reach.
And then there was the cultural aspect of my experience. Every project involved working with governments, consultants, and technical partners from places like Kenya, Uzbekistan, Egypt, the UK, and Saudi Arabia. Even though English was the official working language, every conversation came with different personalities, norms, and expectations. Learning how to adapt my communication style was intriguing, and it’s something I know will help me both as a Huntsman student and later on in my career.
Looking back, this internship checked all my boxes: it pushed me technically, gave me a front-row seat to the kind of sustainable finance work I want to pursue, and let me live and learn in a country I’ve always wanted to experience. More than anything, it left me excited to bring these lessons back to Penn and keep building on them.
