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interview
Dina El-Shenoufy: Egypt, Start-ups & Funding
Dina El Shenoufy is the Chief Investment Officer of flat6labs, a leading startup accelerator and seed funding organization based in Cairo. Prior to that, she was at Al-Ahly Capital Holding, managing an oil & gas portfolio worth $200 million, and before that she worked in Asset Management. Dina is a very serious runner, but also, she learnt to swim in her mid-30’s just so that she could compete in triathlons!
What did we talk about? We focused on two things: entrepreneurship in general and then start-up funding in Egypt. Dina shared advice for entrepreneurs but also for people like you and I who may one day wish to become angel investors – how to do it and what to look out for.
Dina’s recommended book is Traction, and you can find her on LinkedIn or Instagram.
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!
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!
Amy Edmondson: How Psychological Safety Boosts Performance
Amy Edmondson, is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School, a department that studies human interactions that lead to the creation of successful enterprises that contribute to the betterment of society.
Amy has been recognized by the biannual Thinkers50 global ranking of management thinkers since 2011, and in 2019 she also received that organization’s Breakthrough Idea Award for her work on psychological safety. Amy has written numerous articles and SEVEN books, on teaming, psychological safety and organizational learning.
If you are a team member looking to exercise leadership, this episode is for you. If you are a team leader or a CEO looking to create a psychologically safe environment, this episode will tell you how to do it. We also explored the awkwardness of giving and receiving feedback, dealing with bad bosses and much more.
My favorite quote of the episode was: “If you’re not hearing disagreement, that’s a bad sign”.
You can learn more about Amy and her work at www.amycedmondson.com
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!
Dominique Crenn: From Abandoned Child To World-Famous Michelin Starred Chef
Dominique Crenn is the co-owner and chef of the three-Michelin-starred restaurant Atelier Crenn in San Francisco. Driven by her passion to create a deeply personal project, in January 2011 Crenn opened Atelier Crenn, to express her modern vision for fine French cuisine. Atelier Crenn achieved its first Michelin Star just 9 months later!
In the following year, Crenn made history and became the first female chef in the USA to receive two Michelin stars… A few years later, she beat her own record and became the first female chef in the USA to receive three Michelin Stars. Domiqnue has also won the Best Chef in the world award.
So what did we talk about? We talked about evolving as a person and as a professional, about the impact of being abandoned as a child and later being adopted by loving parents, about self-confidence and how to succeed in a highly competitive and male-dominated industry. We also discussed critical leadership traits and her recent experience overcoming cancer. Spoiler alert: we did not talk about food! If you’re a foodie, I highly recommend you check out Chef’s Table, a Netflix documentary about the world’s biggest chefs. Season 2, episode 3 is on Dominique Crenn – and her food philosophy.
You can find Dominique all over social media @dominiquecrenn.
Enjoy!
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. Thanks!
Ann Cairns: Changing Careers & Being The Only Woman In The Room
Ann Cairns is a Vice Chair at Mastercard, a role she took after running all of Mastercard’s business in 200 markets, outside the US. Before joining Mastercard, Ann had spent 20 years as a banker at Citi and ABN Amro, but she actually started her career as an engineer at British Gas and was the first woman in Britain qualified to work on an offshore oil rig!
Ann is the global chair of the 30% club, an organization dedicated to getting at least 30% women at all levels of the corporate world.
We had a wide-ranging discussion about how to navigate many of the challenges that women face in today’s workplace, from endless video conferencing to spending too much time in one role. We talked about building your network, sourcing helpful feedback, using humor to diffuse tense situations, and how to get on Boards.
My favorite quote was “Don’t be a lady in waiting”! You’ll have to listen on for context… Actually I had another favorite quote “take those lunches”…
Ann’s book recommendation was “Bread Therapy” by Pauline Beaumont.
You can find Ann Cairns on LinkedIn and Twitter @annmcairns.
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!
Bernadette Abraham: Stress! And How to Unjunk Your Diet
Welcome to Episode 80, the final episode of Season 3 of When Women Win. This show is for everyone, because it is about food, exercise & wellness.
Bernadette Abraham is a highly respected Functional Nutritional Therapy Practitioner who has written a book called Unjunk: How to Raise Healthy Eaters in a Processed World.
Bernadette is a lifelong athlete – and coach – with a mad passion for health & fitness. As a child, she was a competitive gymnast and coach; in high school, she became a track athlete and coach, almost getting onto the Canadian Olympic team; at university she studied computer engineering and became a martial arts coach! Bernadette was a personal trainer for many years but grew frustrated with inconsistent results – so she turned to “Functional Medicine” and holistic wellness. Bernadette’s Instagram account is one of my favorites because it is so full of useful advice. She is a mother of four.
We talked about stress, hormones, exercise and food. We discussed the nature of food and how it’s changed so significantly over the past 50 years. (If interested in this topic, see also episode 45 with Seta Tutundjian, on the future of food.) Bernadette busted some popular myths and provided practical advice for getting children to “unjunk”, from how to read labels to managing your own feeding style to dealing with resistance.
My favorite quote of the episode was “It’s common – it’s not normal”. All these symptoms we put up with that should actually be addressed.
You can find Bernadette at her website or on Instagram.
To get notified of the release of Bernadette’s book – and for other top tips & free livestreams – subscribe to the When Women Win newsletter right here on the home page.
Rana Dajani: Using Science To Redefine Success & Get Kids to Read for Fun
This episode is for everyone: corporate executives, entrepreneurs, men, women, young, old – all.
Rana Dajani is a teacher turned molecular cell biologist specializing in stem cell research and the epigenetics of trauma. A visiting professor and fellow at several universities, she established the stem cell research ethics law in Jordan and is one of the most influential scientists in the Arab world. She’s won many awards, including Global Changemaker of the year from Fulbright.
Rana is also an award-winning social entrepreneur for her work on getting children to read for pleasure. Rana’s program “We love reading” started in Jordan and is now a social movement across 55 countries.
We talked about the definition of success from a scientific perspective and what practical steps can we take to change it. But first we discussed stem cell research – what it is and what it means for us everyday people. Rana shared her personal story about how her lifelong dream to be a scientist only came true much later in life. We discussed reading for pleasure and how crucial it is for so many reasons, that lifelong learners are in fact lifelong readers. So how do we create these hungry readers? Not by buying them books, it turns out. We talked about the butterfly effect, and the impact that even one person can have.
My two favorite quotes were:
- her response to someone challenging her ability to change the world “Who do you think you are, you’re just a drop in the ocean…”. Her reply: “what is the ocean but millions of drops?”
- “reading for fun is so important…. For the development of cognitive skills, for the imagination, for learning about other people, so that you’re more empathetic and better at communication”
You can find Rana at her website https://welovereading.org/ or on Twitter as @Prof_RanaDajani. And this is her book: Five Scarves: Doing the Impossible – If We Can Reverse Cell Fate, Why Can’t We Redefine Success?
We would love to hear from you! Please drop us a note or take this 1-minute survey to propose topics or guests you’d like to see on future shows. Thank you!
Nisreen Shocair, Serial CEO: Leading Teams, Loyal Customers & IVF
Nisreen Shocair has held various positions within the music, entertainment and retail industries at Virgin, Sony Music, and others. While she’s worked in the United States, UK & Germany, she’s spent the last 12 years in Dubai, managing brands across 10 countries in the Middle East North Africa region. Nisreen was instrumental in turning around the Virgin brand in the Middle East and making it a youth-focused destination, reflecting the regional demographic. She’s received many awards for many different reasons, from the likes of Forbes, Arabian Business, Wharton and others.
Nisreen is a CEO 3 times over, and now runs the Middle East arm of YOOX-Net a Porter, the world’s leading online luxury fashion retailer.
During this rich and diverse episode, we talked about the turn-around success story – how she rescued Virgin Megastores, at a time when CD sales were dying. We talked about customer loyalty and how to foster it. We went deep into team dynamics and how to build a tight, loyal team. We dived into IVF and touched on adoption and surrogacy. We discussed obstacles in the work place and what great managers do to retain talent. We talked about returnships, bringing women back after many years out of the workforce, and ways to support all employees at difficult times in their life.
My favorite quote of the episode was: “you don’t need to compromise financials for humanity or sustainability. You can do both.” It seems very apt to our current troubled times.
Nisreen’s book recommendation is Cheap, a book about the detrimental effects of low-cost manufacturing and buying habits. You can find Nisreen on LinkedIn – please do reach out to her with any questions on IVF, adoption or surrogacy.
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We would love to hear from you! Please drop us a note or take this 1-minute survey to propose topics or guests you’d like to see on future shows. Thank you!
Blockchain 101 – Plus Entrepreneurship & Zebras
This episode is for people who have felt intimidated or excluded by Blockchain conversations and want to understand the basics. We also get into the reality of entrepreneurship. A huge thanks to the Australian Government for supporting When Women Win.
Leanne Kemp is the Founder and CEO of Everledger, a company that uses Blockchain technology to track high-value assets such as diamonds and art. Leanne is recognised internationally as an innovator and leader in the technology sector. A serial entrepreneur, in 2018 Leanne was appointed the Queensland Chief Entrepreneur to develop the state’s startup ecosystem, attract investment and support job creation. She is the first woman entrepreneur to hold this post.
Leanne is an expert advisor to the World Economic Forum and the IBM Blockchain Platform Board of Advisors. She has won many awards including Australia’s Innovator of the Year – twice.
We discussed the basics of Blockchain and how the ledger enables traceability, so acting as a weapon against opacity. We talked about Leanne’s own journey as an entrepreneur, and how Queensland is working to foster an environment of innovation and cooperation. I was amazed by their focus on mental health, and how the Govt has created a Mental Health Toolkit for entrepreneurs.
My favorite quote of the episode was one that captured a huge advantage of the Blockchain: “In future, you’ll be able to check social media posts & news articles and know whether it is fake news”. I look forward to that! I also loved Leanne’s take on start-ups: “we don’t like [to talk about] unicorns but we like to talk about zebras”.
You can find Leanne on Twitter and LinkedIn.
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This episode has been brought to you by the Council for Australian-Arab Relations (CAAR) – an entity within Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade. CAAR supports projects which enhance Australia’s economic, cultural and social relations with the Arab world. Gender equality is one of their focus areas, along with innovation, culture, education & sports. We are grateful for their support.
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Please drop us a note or take this 1-minute survey to propose topics or guests you’d like to see on future shows. Thank you!
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