She Didn’t Wait to Graduate to Go All In

Most college students spend their senior year coasting. Sheikha Al-Otaibi spent hers closing deals.

While her classmates were prepping for finals, Sheikha was running sales calls, staffing engineers and project managers for U.S. companies, and blocking off weekends to build Interlix Staffing — the company she co-founded as a sophomore at Babson.

And now, with graduation behind her, she’s going full-time on the business she’s already been scaling for two and a half years.

“I just thought, I’ve got two years left and a full ride,” she says. “Let me go all in. Why wait?”

Interlix specializes in placing remote professionals from Latin America into roles at U.S.-based construction and tech companies. They focus on quality, English fluency, cultural fit, and real-world experience. No vague promises. Just results.

Their edge? Sheikha’s relentless energy — and a model that removes risk for employers.

“There’s no cost to recruit,” she says. “We’ll show you three top candidates, let you interview them, review portfolios, even give a test project. If you’re not blown away, you don’t pay.”

That’s how she’s changed minds — especially in industries where hiring offshore talent still comes with hesitation.

“We get the traditional mindset, especially in construction,” she says. “People think, ‘I need someone on-site.’ But we show them what’s possible. What it looks like when you bring in a remote estimator or architect at a fraction of the cost, with the same results.”

She’s not just selling staffing. She’s selling belief — in a smarter, leaner, more flexible way to build teams.

And she’s been doing it while juggling classes, assignments, and cross-country travel.

Her strategy? Ruthless time blocking. She stacked her class schedule for Mondays and Wednesdays, freeing up the rest of the week for business. She knocked out assignments early. She communicated clearly with professors. And she carved out spring break for networking trips with other founders.

“If I was going to miss class, I made a plan,” she says. “I didn’t want it to hurt my grades. But I also didn’t want to miss the opportunities showing up in New York or Boston.”

Her work ethic didn’t come from textbooks. It came from experience.

At 10 years old, she was selling paper flowers to help her family make extra money — walking into plazas, dealerships, restaurants. Learning how to pitch. How to smile. How to hear no and keep going.

That early grind never left her.

Neither did her connection to the communities Interlix now serves. Her co-founder, Sebastian, immigrated from Ecuador and saw firsthand the caliber of talent in Latin America. Together, they built a pipeline that could meet demand in industries most startups avoid: construction, engineering, and high-accountability tech roles.

They’ve turned down investment. They’ve bootstrapped everything. And they’ve leaned hard on mentorship and community — especially Babson’s New York and Boston networks.

Now that she’s graduated, Sheikha’s spending the summer in Babson’s venture accelerator, focused on tightening operations and preparing to scale. She’s thinking ahead: partnerships with VCs, expanding their developer network, deepening their foothold in construction.

But it’s not just about scale.

Sheikha’s also doubling down on her voice — turning LinkedIn into a platform for education, visibility, and advocacy. She wants to speak more. Show up more. Be the one telling the truth about what it really takes to build a business from scratch in an industry that doesn’t hand out shortcuts.

“If you get one good client testimonial, in the market you want to serve — that’s it,” she says. “From there, it’s about repeating the process. Proving it works. Building trust.”

She’s not even 22. But she’s already building like someone who’s been doing this for a decade — not because she had to, but because she couldn’t imagine doing it any other way.

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