Impact Stories from Economic Impact Policy Area
Mentor(s): Jill Finlayson
Policy Area(s): Economic Impact, Professional Development
Longtime mentor Jill Finlayson was recently interviewed for her insights on diversity in tech by Malaysian news network Astro AWANI. As Director of the Expanding Diversity and Gender Equity in Tech (EDGE) Initiative at the University of California, Jill was equipped to discuss the lack of diversity in tech workforces as well as the reasoning and steps needed to promote equitable participation of women and other under-represented identities in the industry. “What [companies] need to understand is that by making diversity, equity and inclusion a priority, they actually return better revenues, they make better decisions, they have less risk, and [they produce] better products,” she explained, “because you’ve got people who understand different markets, different countries, different cultures, [and] different experiences. “It’s not only a good thing morally and ethically. It’s a good thing financially.”
Read More »Report Date...: 8/15/2022
Fellow initiative co-hosts nation’s first all-women hackathon
Fellow(s): Merjen Saparmyradova
Country: Turkmenistan
Cohort: 2019
Policy Area(s): Economic Impact, Education Diplomacy/Mentoring, Empowering Women and Girls, Professional Development, Youth Engagement
Fellow Merjen Saparmyradova continues to expand the footprint of her Launch Life Coding Bootcamp, recently co-hosting Turkmenistan’s first-ever women’s hackathon. “DigiWomen Strive”, held in concert with The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) , was a two-day event dedicated to driving women’s empowerment in Turkmenistan through web and mobile app development.
The hackathon led nine all-female teams through the development of tech-driven projects focused on increasing employment, education, networking and mentorship opportunities of women and girls in Turkmenistan. Attendees had spent the preceding six months taking part Merjen’s Launch Life Coding Bootcamp to learn skills for careers in tech.
“Digital transformation is changing our world and shaping our future.” explained Mary Risaeva, UNDP Officer-in-Charge in Turkmenistan. “UNDP promotes gender equality and women’s empowerment and works on eliminating gender stereotypes so that women and men can equally benefit from the opportunities provided by a new digital reality.”
To close out the hackathon, teams pitched their innovations to a panel of judges and all winning teams were awarded prizes and certificates of appreciation. Exceptional participants from each team also earned internships with local IT companies.
Report Date...: 8/15/2022
Fellow delivers keynote speech at African youth summit
Fellow(s): Sabina Nforba
Country: Cameroon
Cohort: 2020-2021
Policy Area(s): Economic Impact, Education Diplomacy/Mentoring, Professional Development, Youth Engagement
Fellow Sabina Nforba (Cameroon, 2020-2021) delivered the keynote address at the opening ceremony of “Democracy and Political Transitions in Africa: Harnessing Youth Voices for Change,” a two-day youth summit held in Accra, Ghana this summer. Acting as a representative of the Office of the Youth Envoy of the African Union Commission, Sabina addressed an audience of participants aged 15-35 from among the Economic Community of West African States’ (ECOWAS) 15 member nations on the importance of youths taking ownership over the democratic and developmental goals of the continent.
Sabina encouraged attendees to get involved in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals and the African Union Agenda 2063, which works to strengthen Africa’s position on the global stage by driving inclusive socio-economic development, comprehensive integration, peace and security and democratic governance. “The youth should actively and meaningfully participate in politics, become entrepreneurs, and fully exploit the African Continental Free Trade Area agreement,” Sabina urged, adding that they should “champion good governance, starting from local communities to regional communities and the continent at large.”
The Youth Summit is a collaboration of ECOWAS, the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP) and the African Governance Architecture (AGA).
Report Date...: 8/8/2022
"Fellow announces partnership to co-host mega IT conference "
Fellow(s): Ayesha Zaman Hammad
Country: Pakistan
Cohort: 2022
Policy Area(s): Economic Impact, Professional Development
SkillsTodo, an e-learning platform co-founded by fellow & CEO Ayesha Zaman Hammad (Pakistan, 2022), recently announced that it will serve as an execution partner for the 7th annual Connected Pakistan conference, a two-day mega event that brings together up to 20,000 participants in the IT and freelancing sectors for 50+ workshops featuring over 300 speakers and government officials.
SkillsTodo provides 90-minute in-demand skills courses taught by field experts at an affordable rate. The startup has quickly gained influence and popularity, rising to the number one spot on the Startany.com “trending startups to follow” list, just four months after its launch in February of 2021.
Ayesha notes that she has boosted her professional engagement due to the influence of TechWomen. “I give a lot of credit for this confidence,” Ayesha said, “to my professional mentor Aliya Janjua,” from SS&C Advent. In addition to running SkillsTodo, Ayesha conducts marketing bootcamps for Microsoft Business to business clients, recently helped raise funds for a co-working space in Lahore, and just joined on as an advisor for Techtitans Pakistan, a peer-to-peer exchange network for tech and HR professionals.
Report Date...: 8/1/2022
Fellow raises six-figure seed funding for e-commerce startup
Fellow(s): Shatha Ajaj
Country: Palestinian Territories
Cohort: 2019
Policy Area(s): Economic Impact, Empowering Women and Girls, Professional Growth
Modesta, a fashion startup founded by Palestinian fellow Shatha Ajaj (2019), has raised six figures in a recent seed funding round. The fundraising round was led by venture capital firm 500 Startups with input from angel investors and the Innovative Private Sector Development Project (IPSD), a program funded by the World Bank.
Founded in March 2020, Modesta is a flourishing e-commerce fashion platform that specializes in diverse offerings of modest women’s clothing. Modesta aims to attract a global customer base seeking an easy and enjoyable way to shop for less-revealing women’s attire for any reason — religious or otherwise. As founder and CEO, Shatha shares that she “is very proud of what Modesta has been able to achieve in the two years since its founding and hopes to “satisfy the needs of modern women who adopt modesty in their lifestyle.”
Shatha intends to use the six-figure seed funding to broaden Modesta’s clientele in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain and develop its technology to include more brands and vendors. “The promised land for Modesta is a global vision as a leading modest e-commerce [platform] for women to express their individuality,” Shatha shared in a recent press release.
Report Date...: 7/18/2022
Fellow hosts seminar on business accounting with help of NGO
Fellow(s): Merjen Saparmyradova
Country: Turkmenistan
Policy Area(s): Economic Impact, Empowering Women and Girls, Professional Growth, Youth Engagement
Merjen Saparmyradova (Turkmenistan, 2019) recently collaborated with Public Accountants, an Ashgabat-based NGO, to lead a seminar on the importance of business accounting as part of her Launch Life Coding Bootcamp for women and girls. The seminar focused on building its participants’ foundational knowledge of economic, financial and legal matters critical for small-scale enterprises and entrepreneurs in Turkmenistan.
Launch Life Coding Bootcamp is designed to promote the economic rights and opportunities of its participants by developing their coding aptitude while also growing their resume, cover letter and interview skills. Merjen believes that “teamwork and collaboration can foster a healthy work culture and environment where teams of individuals can achieve goals through powerful skills and effective work.”
Report Date...: 7/11/2022
Mentor leads POWER sessions with U.S. State Department
Fellow(s): Lucie Newcomb
Country:
Policy Area(s): Economic Impact, Education Diplomacy/Mentoring, Empowering Women and Girls, Professional Growth
Long-time TechWomen mentor Lucie Newcomb, CEO of NewComm Global Group, collaborated with diplomatic partners to host a series of webinars for Providing Opportunities for Women’s Economic Rise (POWER), an initiative of the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs.
Topics of the webinar series focused on value proposition and product market fit, business planning, funding sources and pitching. Lucie co-designed and co-facilitated these sessions with stakeholders from the U.S. Embassies in Tokyo and Seoul.
POWER was launched in 2019 to leverage diplomatic relationships and resources to promote women’s economic empowerment worldwide. It connects the U.S. private sector with U.S. missions abroad to encourage opportunities, partnership and strategy among women-led enterprises in emerging markets.
Lucie has worked as a Speaker Program Trainer and Curriculum Developer for the U.S. State Department for more than 8 years. She actively attended last month’s SelectUSA Summit hosted by the U.S. Department of Commerce and has recently been named one of the 150 Great Leaders of 2022 by the Global Council for the Promotion of International Trade.
Report Date...: 7/11/2022
Fellow subject of short film on pioneering satellite build
Fellow(s): Kyzzhibek Batyrkanova
Country: Kyrgyzstan
Cohort: 2019
Policy Area(s): Economic Impact, Education Diplomacy/Mentoring, Empowering Women and Girls, Entrepreneurship, Professional Growth
Kyrgyz fellow Kyzzhibek Batyrkanova (2019) recently starred as the lead subject of a 7-minute documentary on the Kyrgyz Space Program produced by the Eastern Standard Times (EST). Kyzzhibek is the 27-year-old director of the Kyrgyz Space Program and leads an all-girls team on a mission to build and launch their country’s first ever satellite. The Kyrgyz Space Program was founded in 2018 to advance science, education and gender equality in the country and Central Asian region. With no national space infrastructure to lean on, Kyzzhibek and her team have started from scratch, first building a lightweight 10cm x 10cm x 10cm educational model of a CubeSat, a miniature satellite which can collect and analyze simple data from space before moving on to draft and flight models. In the short film, Kyzzhibek explains, “Our project [is] not only aiming to launch the satellite, but also to educate girls and women. More than 100 women [have] graduated our course and they [have] started [sic] how to solder, how to create 3d models, how to code, and [how to] work with Arduino microcontrollers and their sensors.” She continues, “after completing our courses, some of the girls wanted to study programming and become software developers and some [went on] to universities with technical majors.”
Despite the simplicity of the satellite model, the project has already lasted four years and is estimated to cost more than 100,000 USD. The Kyrgyz Space Program raises funds in part through a Patreon page. There, they honor important women from international space history with various donation brackets named after the famous figures, including Shiaki Mukai, the first female Asian astronaut, Anousheh Ansari, the first Muslim female astronaut and Anna Lee Fisher, the first mother to journey to space. The history-making satellite has been named after Burulai Turdaaly Kyzy, a 20-year-old Kyrgyz medical student who was murdered by her abductor in a police station while trying to report her own bride kidnapping.
“We really want girls in our country, our region and globally to understand that they are capable of doing anything,” Kyzzhibek declares. “The world is such a big place, and the universe is enormous. No matter what other people tell you, always believe in yourself.”
Report Date...: 7/4/2022
Fellow helps host virtual career fair to promote global hiring
Fellow(s): Hiba Ghannam
Country: Palestinian Territories
Policy Area(s): Economic Impact, Education Diplomacy/Mentoring, Professional Growth
Fellow Hiba Ghannam (Palestinian Territories, 2019) took part in producing the first MENA-wide Virtual Career Fair 2022 to be hosted by Washington D.C. based startup Localized, where she works as a Senior Quality Assurance Engineer. Localized hosted over 60 companies from numerous nations and industries, with sponsors and guests including Google, Nestle and U.S. News and World Report. The company’s platform is designed to connect businesses seeking to build diverse, high-achieving teams with a global talent pool. Hiba held virtual sessions for recent STEM-major graduates, advising them on finding “international opportunities and remote work from [their] region.” Hiba is an example of this ethos as a remote employee for the American startup working from her home in the Palestinian Territories. Hiba completed her master’s thesis in software engineering from Birzeit University and is a co-founder of Palestine Tech Meetups.
Read More »Report Date...: 7/4/2022
Fellow makes history with first prize win for biomedical innovation
Fellow(s): Norah Magero
Country: Kenya
Cohort: 2022
Policy Area(s): Economic Impact, Entrepreneurship, Professional Growth
2022 Fellow Norah Magero recently made history as the first Kenyan and second woman to win first place in the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation. Beating out three other finalists, Norah’s presentation before judges and a live audience on June 15, 2022 won the first prize of £25,000 for her innovation Vaccibox, a portable and solar-powered vaccine refrigerator that safely stores and transports temperature-sensitive medications. Vaccibox serves an especially critical need as the world navigates the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, throughout which global supply chain breakdowns have threatened the delivery of temperature-dependent medicine, especially to rural and field healthcare locations. Norah’s winning innovation is a 40-liter box that can be wheeled with a telescopic handle or mounted on all manner of vehicles, including motorcycles and boats. Vaccibox also features a built-in thermostat, solar panel connectivity and other stabilizing features to ensure reliable temperature control throughout use. “VacciBox was designed with our local challenges in mind. It’s versatile, reliable and localised. We’re ensuring that it works the way healthcare workers need it to work for the conditions they face each day,” Norah said.
Norah is a Mechanical Engineer and renewable energy consultant. She is co-founder of both Cool Green Campaign, a renewable energy mentoring initiative for high school students, and Drop Access, a non-profit focused on rural energy access.
The Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation was founded by the UK’s Royal Academy of Engineering in 2014 and holds the distinction as Africa’s largest award of its kind.
Report Date...: 6/27/2022