Hi everyone,
Warm hugs to all strong women this Women's International Day. You're all stars! Now, I'm not just saying this because I'm a woman - I mean it. In fact, a strong woman made me who I am today (thanks, mom!).
Women are generally underrepresented at the workplace, especially in leadership positions. Yet, lucky for me, I'm working in an all-female team. An amazing boss lady who has been an inspiring entrepreneur in my life is my very own boss: Raja Al Mazrouei. She's one of the top 100 women in the FinTech industry, Board Director and Financial Innovation Executive. Raja recruited me two years ago and has taught me so much ever since!
In other regional news, Anghami becomes the first Arab tech company to list on the NASDAQ New York stock exchange. And yes, you can listen to our podcast on Anghami!
Now, moving on to this week's episode, we talk about how support systems can help women achieve their career ambitions.
In our latest episode, we sit down with Julie Nguyen who is the founder of Crunchmoms. Crunchmoms is a community and networking platform for working moms to connect with like minded-women and boost their career ambitions. Crunchmoms is now available as a web-based community. There are weekly online sessions where moms discuss all sorts of different topics, such as, job searching, self-confidence, and creating CVs. Together we discuss:
The benefit of support systems for working moms
Balancing work and home life
Improving female business participation in the MENA region
Dedicated working mom communities helps women achieve their career goals through support systems and tailored guidance programs
Crunchmoms is a community and networking platform for talented moms to connect with like minded-women and boost their career ambitions. If you're looking for a job, community-driven platforms, like Crunchmoms, help you brush up on your CV, mentally prepare, and balance work/ home life. They also provide mentors and coaches to get you where you need to be in life. Or, they can help you start up a business and give you advice accordingly.
Specifically, women who haven't worked in a few months or years greatly benefit from such mentorship as they've been out of the workplace for some time (even the shortest durations can actually be pretty long in a very tech-driven world!).
Find what is most important to you at your current stage of life so that you're able to focus on what matters
Since the pandemic began, working remotely has provided more flexibility in work hours. This way, moms are able to efficiently work and manage their personal lives from home. However, it can be stressful since working from home with children is mentally consuming.
The best way to manage time is to identify your three top priorities and stick to them. As life changes, your priorities change as well. When you plan by the hour, you're able to assign specific time slots to get tasks done. This way, you're setting clear boundaries on when to focus on work, family, and other priorities in your life.
There is a huge opportunity to empower working moms in the Middle East
Female business participation in the Middle East is the lowest in the world despite the region having a high literacy rate. This can be linked to moms not having any corporate support to make it easier for them. To increase the number of women working in the MENA region, Crunchmoms is now forming connections with other female entrepreneurs and businesswomen in MENA.
It doesn't matter whether you live in the Middle East or somewhere else. If you have an ambitious mom who has a business idea that you'd like to share, you can sign up on their official website!
Until next time,
Shereen