Did you enjoy school?
I first started school in Baghdad and I loved it! I was actually really poorly when I was younger, so I spent a lot of my time as a child in and out of hospital. That was tough, but school for me was a fun, safe place to be. I moved to the UK when I was 13 and that was a good few years learning a new language and a new way of life; really tough for a teenager to navigate but by my later years in school I was back to loving it again!
What qualifications do you have?
I have a BSc and PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Birmingham. It’s not the most popular qualification choice for management consultants but it certainly makes a great icebreaker.
Has your career path been a smooth transition, a rocky road or a combination of both?
My career path has been a bit of a mixture of both, maybe not so much rocky as accidental. I’ve had two really successful careers in my life, one as a biochemist and my current role in tech and IT. I never grew up saying ‘I want to be a management consultant’, it’s one of those jobs you just fall into, and that’s exactly what happened to me.
What specific challenges do you see women facing in the industry?
Where to start? Obviously equity and being seen as equals in a male dominated space is a huge issue, but being specific, I think we need to work on how we band together as women to challenge the status quo. When I look around the business landscape, a huge portion of women in senior roles try to emulate men and we absolutely shouldn’t. We are nothing like men and really, I think we need to find a way to use our strengths, like empathy and emotion, to make space for women in senior leadership roles. So the challenge? Maybe it’s swapping power poses and pantsuits for authentic raw authenticity and female intuition.
What is the best career advice you can give to others?
My best piece of career advice is – don’t just stick at a job just because you have a job. The younger generation are really good at this already, but I know too many people who are too scared of the unknown, to leave a job they are completely unhappy in! The beauty of life is that you really can just follow your heart, sometimes people need reminding of that.
If you had to pick one mentor that had the biggest influence on you, who would it be?
My dad. He is the person who really inspires my ethics and my outlook on life. He was the kind of person who jumped out of bed every morning, ready for whatever the day might throw at him. He was a classic example of ‘if you love your job, you’ll never work a day in your life’, I guess he’s the motivation behind me taking the leap to leave my first career at the age of 30!
From where do you draw inspiration?
I live and breathe change, I love it. I always have. I’m always on the lookout for something that helps me to develop more and open my eyes to new ways of thinking. The biggest thing I’ve found and something I urge everyone to do, is to travel. I’m a firm believer that whenever you travel you will come back just a little bit changed. Whether it’s a positive or negative change, you become exposed and you leave with a new outlook or thoughts, it makes you realise how much more is out there!
What is the biggest challenge you have faced to date?
Running a business is a bit like being on a rollercoaster that you’ve never ridden before. You can sit and try and guess what the rollercoaster path will be, whether there will be any turns or twists, but ultimately, it’s impossible to know – we can only try to forecast the future based on what we know today. That is the biggest challenge, planning a business 12 months in advance each year and simply not knowing. There are obviously ways we can prepare for the unexpected, and how we can predict our needs for the future, being a small business we’re definitely able to be more agile here.
What qualities do you feel makes a good leader?
Empathy, energy and expertise are all absolutely key to being a good leader. Employees want to know they work with someone who genuinely cares about them and their work. I know when I was a younger member of the team, having a leader who had been there, done it and could empathise and provide guidance meant more to me than anything else.
From a work viewpoint, what has the last 12 months been like?
These last 12 months have been one of the best for Entec Si. Our team is in a really good place; we’ve just been awarded the Great Place to Work certificate, testament to our phenomenal culture. The last few years have definitely had their own challenges, we’ve had to make some really difficult decisions, but this last year really has shown us we made the right decisions.
What would you say are the biggest tech-based challenges we face today?
AI and machine learning is the biggest tech challenge we face today. It is our job, as digital leaders, to ensure that everyone can understand it, use it, train it and most importantly, make it work for them. The issues that come with not being able to use it or prompt properly are far more risky than those if we learn to integrate and use it well – rubbish in, rubbish out! So yes, AI is the biggest challenge, but it’s also the biggest opportunity for us.
What can be done to encourage more women into the industry?
Encouraging more women into the industry comes down to lifting other women up, including myself! I’m guilty of not doing as much as I’d like to in this area, it can be tough to take the responsibility as role model on, but the value we can add to other people’s lives is so important. We need to encourage women to want to learn about tech, whether that starts at a younger age, or into their careers. Tech in general is still a heavily male dominated industry, so we need to find a way to break through that.
Give us a fact about you that most other people wouldn’t know
I’m actually a pilot! I may have never wanted to be a management consultant when I was growing up, but I did want to be an astronaut. Flying a plane is as close as I’ll get to that dream!
