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Mariate Arnal: From Corporate to Entrepreneurship to Corporate


Maria Teresa Arnal – or Mariate – is the first ever Venezuelan guest on When Women Win, and she’s based in Mexcio City. After studying engineering, Mariate started her career as a management consultant and then spent 8 years at Microsoft, before deciding to take the plunge and build her own digital marketing company… It was so successful that she sold it to WPP, one of the world’s biggest communication companies. A few years later, Mariate decided to re-enter corporate. She worked at Twitter and Google and is currently the Head of Latin America for Stripe, a company that does infrastructure for online payments.

What did we talk about? Failure, success & alignment. We talked about getting help when you need it – from a therapist, a friend or a mentor. Mariate gave advice on networking and job hunting – listen closely for that 2×2 matrix tool… Finally, we discussed her uncomfortable reality of starting a new job right at the beginning of Covid and leading a remote team that you’ve never met – she also shared some practical tips on how to do this.

My favorite quotes were: “I love Mondays; it’s a new week to change the world!… and I also love Fridays because I am exhausted by Friday night!”

You can find Maria Teresa Arnal on LinkedIn and Twitter.

I’d love to hear from you… Please drop me a note or take this 1-minute survey to propose topics or guests you’d like to see on future shows.  Thank you!

Nadine Mezher: Owning Your Financial Independence


Most women on earth will have to make financial decisions on their own at some point in their life, due to divorce or longer life expectancy. We therefore need to educate, enable and embolden ourselves – as well as our children – so that we can all own our financial independence. This episode is for people who want to learn about investing cheaply and/ or people thinking of entrepreneurship.

Nadine Mezher is the co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer of award-winning Fintech start-up Sarwa, the first automated investment advisory platform in the Middle East – one that’s accessible from all over the planet. Sarwa is trying to make investing more accessible to the masses, through low minimum investment amounts and extremely low fees. Like other robo-advisory platforms, they’re democratising investing. And there is clearly demand: just 2 years into its existence, Sarwa has won loads of competitions and raised 3 rounds of funding…

Nadine co-founded Sarwa after years of being a retail consultant to large public and private sector clients. Prior to that, she was in fashion management and marketing across various industries. Nadine was named MENA Achieving Women 2019 by Entrepreneur Middle East Magazine.

What did we talk about? Initially, it was trees… I know it sounds weird, but this bit is going to interest & surprise you. It takes us a few minutes to get into investing: the mistakes that people typically make, and how we can avoid them using the 4 rules of investing. She had some data to back up what I knew anecdotally: that most everyday “financial advisors” underperform the market. We discussed her experience as an entrepreneur and the challenges she faces every day, both in business and as a mom. And finally, we talked about the ingredients of success as well as the failures along the way.

My favorite quotes of the episode were:

  • “You only incur the loss when you pull out of the market”
  • “I’m not someone who thinks that there’s one career path per person”
  • “Failure is part of the learning process for me”

You can find Nadine on LinkedIn or at www.sarwa.co.

As mentioned on the show, we’d like to highlight some young women-owned start-ups over the 2019 Christmas holidays… Please email producer@rananawas.com between December 16th & 23rd a 30-50 second video telling us about your business. Two videos will be selected per week – four in total. Please keep the video snappy – and if you’d like some help creating it, check out my new YouTube video on crafting a badass Elevator Pitch.

Do keep an eye on our social media platforms as some changes are planned for 2020! If you enjoy the podcast and are an iTunes user, dropping us a rating and review would be the best Christmas present ever 😊

The team here wishes you a glorious festive season – you need it and deserve it. We’ll be back on air on Monday January 6th. Happy Holidays!