Tech Sisters Stories

🚀 Tech Sisters is thrilled to announce our very first community hackathon for Muslim women in tech! 

✅ Collaborate with other Muslim women and create meaningful work together 

✅ Develop your skills and build your experience 

✅ Participate from anywhere in the world, on your schedule

That's a wrap on Season 2! 🎬

How many of us got into tech not because we loved to code, but because we saw a problem and had an idea? These sisters take the founder's path into tech. Some of them have prior technical experience and some don't. But they all have passion for their idea and a drive to make it happen.

Insha Tazeen, is in the middle of that path. In today's episode, she discusses the projects she's working on and what she's doing to overcome her non-technical background.

1. Deciding to get a Master's degree in AI (4:30)
2. Co-funding Bound Security, a cybersecurity consultancy (5:30)
3. "The more I'm challenged, the more I feel motivated" (12:30)

Three months into her first job after university, Sanna Siddiqui's manager left, leaving all of the company's PR and communications work to fall on Sanaa alone.

In today's episode, Sanaa tells us how she handled that sudden change, learned to advocate for herself, and how she's dealt with always being the first Muslim woman in her role at the companies she joins.

1. The benefits of having a manager who supports your professional growth (18:30)
2. Creative roles are part of tech too (23:00)
3. Sanaa's experiences always being the first Muslim woman in her role (25:00)

A lot of people say they stumbled into their jobs - and we have a lot of podcast episodes with guests who describe their career this way.

But we've never heard a story like Reham Fawad's. Her product career was literally handed to her!

Is it better to be a generalist or a specialist? Should you stick to one path and become an expert in it or give yourself the flexibility to explore many different options? This is something that's unique to everyone and the answer changes as we move through live.

Today's guest, Aaliya Khan, thought she was a specialist. She went to school to specialise in global medicine and health advocacy. But, as she puts it, she fell into tech and into Product Management. In this episode, Aaliya tells us how she found her feed at an early stage start-up where her role was constantly pivoting and how she learned to embrace flexibility amid chaos.

1. How Aaliya fell into Product Management from a background in global health (4:00)
2. Aaliya's experiences working at an early-stage startup and having to pivot her role many times (9:00)
3. Push and advocate for yourself because you don't know what change that can have for the next person after you (37:00)

"Sorry. You're the best candidate for this role, but we wouldn't be able to go ahead because of your hijab. People would think we're an Islamic organisation, and we don't want that. Maybe you could take it off?"

Searching for a new job can be a hard and demoralising process, even at the best of times. Most of us would be shocked to see such blatant discrimination in a job interview, but this is what today's guest, Fatimah Akanbi heard over and over when starting her career in Nigeria. And she's not alone. Sadly we've heard many similar stories from Tech Sisters around the world.

So what gave Fatimah the motivation to keep going? Did she find a job that accepted her? Did she need to compromise her deen to achieve her career goals?

Listen to today's episode to find out!

1. I didn't want to continue being at the mercy of employers who would discriminate based on my religion (3:12)
2. I believe once you are committed, I believe hard work, perseverance, and consistency are the keys to success (6:22)
3. Fatimah's volunteer work teaching coding to children from secondary schools and slums in Nigeria: "These are children people have given up on and I see a brighter future for them" (22:25)

Imagine you're sitting in your university lessons with an uncomfortable feeling that you can't ignore anymore. You're realising that what you've spent the last few years studying, the life you planned for yourself, isn't actually what you want for yourself. How do you move on from that? Do you ignore that feeling and keep going or do you try something else.

That's what's happened to today's guest, Nasrien Youness. In the middle of university, she pivoted away from International Development and learned how build a career out of her love for drawing. Now a product designer at Uhubs, Nasrien tells us how she taught herself design skills, built up her portfolio, and her experience as one of the first scholarship recipients to the Love Circular Bootcamp through Muslamic Makers and The Aziz Foundation.

1. Deepen your learning by putting your lessons into practice (4:00)
2. Product design is just iteration after iteration. There's no end point. You just keep improving (10:56)
3. Reach out to people, get involved in the community and make sure that you are building real case studies rather than just conceptual ones and redesigns (16:38)

Today on Tech Sisters Stories we're excited to have Alifya Kagalwalla

Alifya Kagalwalla is a VP of Engineering at Tempus Labs in Chicago. At Tempus she leads various engineering operations teams focused on cloud infrastructure, test engineering and developer productivity. Tempus is a precision medicine company that leverages AI to help physicians make informed treatment decisions and improve patient outcomes. Prior to Tempus she held various engineering leadership roles at Digital Ocean, Groupon and Citrix Systems. Outside of work, she is a proud mom to two awesome girls and is always looking for fun and educational DIY projects to do with them!

• The importance of having core values and principles that ground you throughout your career (6:22)
• How Alifya builds authentically inclusive environments as a senior leader(12:00)
• How to decide between the tech lead and management pathways (14:00)
• Alifya's advice for dealing with bias at work (17:50)
• The leaky pipeline and how we can prevent women from leaving tech (25:00)

Today on Tech Sisters Stories we're excited to have Shaheen Sultana

Shaheen is a QA Analyst at Aventum Group. She loves to speak at various conferences and blogs to share knowledge and connect with more people in the community.

• Once you have knowledge, you can demand what you're worth (10:10)
• The more you do wrong, the more you learn (17:33)
• Don't limit yourself by only asking for feedback and guidance from only your field (19:00)

Today on Tech Sisters Stories we're excited to have Zahraa Al Sahili.

Zahraa is a current PhD Student at Queen Mary University of London and Google DeepMind PhD Scholar. Zahraa is also an AI Session Lead a Udacity.

• Zahraa's experience studying in Beirut during the height of the economic crisis (2:32)
• Zahraa's favourite AI project (7:30)
• The complexity of removing implicit bias from AI (10:00)

Today on Tech Sisters Stories we're excited to have Marwa Jawad

Marwa enjoys developing things that live on the internet. Her interest in web development started back in 2018 when she decided to try to make her ideas into real projects with HTML & CSS! Fast-forward to today, and Marwa had the privilege of working on a variety of real projects using the latest techniques

• Marwa's experiences as a developer in Iraq (2:00)
• Be ready for opportunities before you get them (4:30)
• Without mistakes, you never learn (11:10)

Today on Tech Sisters Stories we're excited to have Fatma Elasouad

Today on Tech Sisters Stories we're excited to have Esraa Qandeel.

Esraa is a software engineer at Trilogy. She graduated from Al Azhar University and has a master's degree in computer software engineering from Arizona State University

• Esraa's top tips for surviving technical interviews (9:25)
• Don't face huge complex problems head-on. Break them down into small pieces first (19:35)
• Esraa's experience working in tech as a niqabi (28:43)
• If companies care about the quality of their code, I should care about the quality of my life (40:10)

Today on Tech Sisters Stories we're excited to have Shahed AlMashni

Shahed is currently a software engineer at Google working on Sovereign Cloud. Previously, Shahed has held internships at Amazon, Meta, and Google.

• How competitive programming helped Shahed pass her technical interviews (3:53)
• What kept Shahed applying for internships even though she didn't get any responses for two years (6:00)
• Shahed's growth mindset and how it helps her become a better version of herself every year (12:00)

Today on Tech Sisters Stories we're excited to have Hawa Camara

Hawa is a freelance Copywriter working with the Brandz Bee on the Tech Sisters rebranding project.

She loves to write personality-filled copy that goes right to the heart and boosts conversions.

• Why Hawa feels her ADHD is a blessing and a curse (11:39)
• "Good copywriting is when you understand what people want, how they want it, and when they want it" (14:53)
• "No one can touch me because I'm comfortable with who I am" (21:50)
• Find a way to keep going. Even if I fall, I have to get up and figure it out, even if I don't know how. (27:50)
• "If someone doesn't like you, it doesn't matter. They don't pay your bills, and they never will!" (45:47)

Today on Tech Sisters Stories we’re excited to have Yulianna Frederika

Yulianna is a multi-faceted creative with expertise in graphic design, branding, social media & content creation across various industries who believes that thought-provoking content inspires actionable change.

Today on Tech Sisters Stories we're excited to have Sara Khan 

Sara is a Program Manager at Amazon Web Services where she manages MAS2 and all of its services. She especially enjoys using data to convey meaningful stories about consumer patterns, behaviours and business operations 

Key Lessons from this Episode

• How Sara balances working and motherhood (3:07)
• The importance of having women, especially from minority backgrounds, in leadership positions (7:52)
• Why the most important thing you need in tech is confidence (19:55)

Today on Tech Sisters Stories we're excited to have Marium Abid

Marium is a senior technology consultant Digital Analyst at EY. She’s an active Tech Sisters member and was the recipient of last season’s scholarship from Product Guru.

• Marium's experience getting into tech through an apprenticeship (5:22)
• Winning the Product Guru scholarship and her experiences (8:00)
• How Marium prioritises what to learn (27:30)

Today on Tech Sisters Stories we're excited to have Ruqayyah Brown!

Ruqayyah is a brand strategist helping iconic Muslim brands elevate their voices. She has over 10 years of experience in brand building and is also the co-founder of Homeschool Queens

• Why Ruqayyah loves working with Muslim brands (5:20)
• How she navigates being a brand strategist and co-founder (11:15)
• Ruqayyah's tips for being comfortable in uncomfortable situations (13:20)

For our first episode of season 2, we are so excited to have Yasmin Desai. AKA the startup girl, Yasmin is a product director who has worked for over eight years in startups, including catapult Revolute and  Impala. She's passionate about startups, tech and entrepreneurship, and she's on a mission to empower people, to develop entrepreneurship as a skill in their day jobs.

Key Lessons

• "Just apply. The worst that can happen is you don't get it. At least you tried" (6:50)
• Why Yasmin loves startups (17:20)
• Advice for people who want to launch a product (29:25)

Today on Tech Sisters Stories we're excited to have Reem Mahmoud

Today on Tech Sisters Stories we're excited to have Safa Ghribi!

Safa is a full stack developer at Microsoft, and an expert in NodeJS, Electron, Angular and React with quite a certification collection! She also did her university studies in 3 different countries: Tunisia, France, and Canada.

• Never limit your ambitions 11:00
• Safa's advice for getting into top tech companies like Unity and Microsoft 15:30
• Don't focus too much on work; have a healthy life balance 23:30
  

Today on Tech Sisters Stories we're excited to have Amira Chalbi

Amira is a UX/CX researcher at Worldline Global. She’s very experienced in UX design and research, data visualization, innovation, UX strategy, and market studies.

Amira is passionate about contributing to the development and enrichment of the community and has been a wonderful part of Tech Sisters

• Amira's experiences working in academia and industry as a Muslim woman in France 8:30
• What happens when companies misuse UX 14:38
• The mindset that helped Amira overcome the many challenges she's faced 24:00

It's a solo episode this week!

We get asked about how to survive as a Muslim woman in tech all the time. And from women at all points of their careers - from considering transitioning into tech to seasoned tech veterans.

In this episode, I'll talk about why niche groups, like Tech Sisters, are essential, what's going on with the tech pipeline, and go over some strategies to reduce the harm you might experience as a Muslim woman working in tech.

Key Lessons from this Episode

• Why niche groups, like Tech Sisters, are so important 4:00
• What's happening with the leaky pipeline 9:00
• Techniques to reduce the harm you might experience 14:00

Today on Tech Sisters Stories we're excited to have Sherifat Akintunde-Shitu.

Today on Tech Sisters Stories we're excited to have Rahmat Lasisi

Rahmat has more than 17 years of experience working in tech and has done pretty much everything: Web Application Development, Mobile Application, Bespoke Websites, Hardware Architecture, Big Data Analysis, Team Building, Mentoring and Product Management.

Today on Tech Sisters Stories we're excited to have Aysha Ingar

Today on Tech Sisters Stories we have Khaulat Abdulhakeem!

Khaulat is a tech career coach, instructor, and speaker who loves helping students and recent graduates choose and navigate their dream tech careers.

Are you feeling dissatisfied with work and thinking about making a career change into tech?

Kemi Hassan is a Silver Star award-winning agile coach and certified scrum master with 7 years of experience coaching teams, business analysts, managers and senior executives on Agile values, principles and practices.

She leads and manages the process of delivering software products; as well as providing coaching and mentoring to various individuals and teams on how to become more agile & deliver value more effectively.