Podcast Interview with WI-HER Founder Dr. Taroub Harb Faramand: International Women’s Day
Dr. Taroub Harb Faramand is a mentor, physician, entrepreneur, and creative innovator. More than 35 years ago, she began her career as a service provider before moving into various leadership roles, including with USAID. In 2011, she founded WI-HER, LLC with a vision to build a world where everyone has the opportunity to grow and thrive. In recognition of her many contributions to advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in development, Dr. Faramand received the USAID Alumna Award in 2022.
In this interview with WI-HER’s Knowledge Management Associate, Elizabeth Kemigisha, Dr. Faramand discusses the importance of moving from thought to action as well as designing activities to help the people we serve, without biases or preconceived notions.
She shares, “My work as a physician providing services to refugees and then managing global health projects made me realize how much inequities affect outcomes, not only in health of course, I worked a lot in health, but also in other sectors like education, energy, wildlife, and now we work on a variety of projects at WI-HER. But all these different outcomes that projects try to accomplish and achieve, I realized how important it is for us to take extra measures and take additional steps to close gaps affecting different people that we serve, and this led me to start the company.”
We invite you to listen to the full interview here:
A preview of the interview is accessible here:
Full transcript of the conversation between Elizabeth Kemigisha (EK) and Dr. Taroub Harb Faramand (TF)
EK: Hello. Welcome to WI-HER’s podcast! On this podcast, we sit with various people and discuss selected topics. We invite you to listen in and share your thoughts in the comment section. I am Elizabeth Kemigisha, and I work at WI-HER, where I serve as the Knowledge Management Associate. Today, I am joined by Dr. Taroub Harb Faramand, who is our president and the founder of WI-HER. We will be discussing the importance of equity in honor of this year’s International Women’s Day. We are very excited to speak to Dr. Taroub because she’s a lady that we admire at WI-HER. We love her very much. She has inspired us with the work that she’s doing. She leads from her heart, and she is constantly, constantly telling us that we do great work and the value of the work that we do at WI-HER, which is to advance equity. So we are very excited about the theme for this year’s Women’s Day, and this is just in line with what WI-HER does. I look forward to this conversation that I’m going to have with Dr. Taroub. She is joining us from Florida. So, Dr. Taroub, please tell us a little bit about yourself.
TF: Thank you, Kemmy, for the opportunity, and thank you so much for your kind words. So I’m, as I mentioned, I’m Taroub Harb Faramand. I’m the president and founder. I’m a physician, a mother, a grandmother. I would say, I’m an embracer of equity, if you will. I am very supportive of people’s ideas to advance equity, and I’m so delighted to be here with you today and talk to you. Kemmy, thank you.
EK: Thank you very much for that introduction. Let’s jump straight into the questions that we have for today. The theme of this year’s International Women’s Day is “Embrace equity.” So, what does embracing equity mean to you?
TF: Thank you, Kemmy. First, I’m very grateful for this year’s topic, which is extremely important, and I’m so delighted that there is much focus now on equity worldwide. This is a topic that has been very dear and near to my heart for many, many years. And embracing equity, to me, means being fair to others, not only in words, but also in actions. It is about being open, being accepting, and making an effort in our daily lives, at work, at home or wherever we are, towards achieving justice. To me, this is a very important, if you will, topic, and that’s why I started WI-HER – to make sure that we have a platform for creative minds, for innovative minds, to join forces to achieve equity in a variety of sectors, Kemmy. And I just want to say that embracing equity is not a simple task, because we are influenced by so much that is going on around us. We are affected by the cultures that we come from, our upbringings, the communities that we work and live in, and everything else that comes with that. We, as people, are fast in making judgments, and we are fast in having perceptions and also making assumptions. And this, of course, affects the way we think about others and what we can do to achieve equity for all. So that is what it means to me, embracing equity.
EK: Thank you. I like how you are straightforward on it, having to be not just words, but actions as well. I love that very much. So how do you embrace equity in your professional life and then in your work life?
TF: Absolutely. So my work as a physician, providing services to refugees and then managing global health projects, made me realize how much inequities affect outcomes, not only in health, of course. I worked a lot in health, but also in other sectors, like education, energy, and wildlife. Now, we work on a variety of projects at WI-HER, but all these different outcomes that projects try to accomplish and achieve – I realized how important it is for us to take extra measures and take additional steps to close gaps affecting different people that we serve, and this led me to start the company. So your question is, how do I embrace it in my professional life? I embrace it every day. Honestly, that’s why I started WI-HER, and I’m very, very excited about having a group of people that we work together – creative, committed people, colleagues of mine, based in the US and globally to help me identify innovations and help me address issues of inequities.
TF: To address inequities in our work, we specifically address gender and social inclusion issues affecting inequities, and to that end, we came up with an innovative methodology called iDARE, which is helping many communities globally now close gender and social inclusion-related gaps and achieve equitable outcomes for all. We promote equity and fairness in everything we do every day and all day. Kemmy, we ask ourselves, what can we do today to achieve this goal, and what is it that we are doing that might cause harm? This is an important aspect. Of course, we will never cause harm intentionally, but we must ask ourselves: how might we have caused harm unintentionally to someone we were supposed to serve? We are open to recognizing and accepting failures because to achieve equity, accepting and recognizing what should not have been done is important, and one must ask themselves, what is it that I thought of or I did that might have contributed to a not so positive outcome? I mean, recognizing this fact is important, and when we start recognizing our internal biases, assumptions and questioning ourselves, we can move towards equity faster.
EK: There’s a lot you’ve said there, highlighting the collaborations that need to happen, the individual looking within that needs to happen. And that’s one of the things that I enjoy the most about working at WI-HER… that for most of our work, you have to look within, and you, as a person, have to believe, in line with even this year’s thing, that we are embracing equity and in all that we do. Even myself… doing knowledge management, I know that I am adding a break to something that is powerful. Advancing equity, breaking down barriers and the biases that exist in communities, it is very exciting.
TF: And one more point came, I’d like to just share with you – sometimes, because of the way we are brought up, each one of us has biases. Belonging is very important, and how can we, within belonging, embrace diversity? Sometimes, because we want to belong, we tend to not share our thoughts openly, and we really need to… have an open mind and heart to be able to share our thoughts openly about the biases that we have and find a way to address them, first within ourselves and then among our colleagues. But I noticed lately that there is a tendency to move away from this openness, unfortunately, because in some communities and some communications, with this virtual world that we live in right now, there is not as much acceptance of different thoughts.
TF: We talk about diversity every day. We talk about acceptance, about inclusion. But are we really inclusive? Are we really accepting? Do we really have an open mind to listen to others and what they think? Unfortunately, we don’t have that openness yet. So, some people now tend to want to belong to a group or another, and there is a lot of polarization when it comes to achieving equity. How do we achieve equity without us having that open mind and heart and taking active steps towards justice for all? Where we offer services that will meet the needs of all individuals and… treating others as human beings, and having respect for everybody, and making sure that we are honest about the services that we offer? And when we go to a community, we just go with an open mind, open slate, if you will – not go there with assumptions about what we want to do, what the community needs. We need to also listen, listen to the people that we serve, and make sure that we design activities that will help them. Like, ‘I am here to help. I’m here. What can I do to help you?’ We need to ask that question without any assumptions, any biases, any preconceived ideas. Does this come easy? Definitely not.
EK: I was about to ask you that question. I was about to say: how easy is it to break the barriers? Does it come easy for for someone to have an open slate?
TF: It doesn’t come easy – we need a lot of practice, but it can be accomplished. If we keep asking ourselves in every action we take or every thought that comes to our mind, am I being fair? Am I being biased? Did I come to this project or to this idea with an open mind, or did I come with a perceived notion or idea? Am I open to accept the other? This is very important. Am I able to celebrate with others their successes? Is their success my success? Or is it only my way? So it’s not easy, but it can be done, and it takes time and it takes practice. It’s like practicing a muscle. We need to practice the muscle of equity and acceptance. Honestly, if I can call it a muscle, to me, as I mentioned at the beginning, equity is all about fairness and about justice and about offering… this approach to others. I want to be treated with fairness and respect, and we should also allow everybody, and enable everybody to also be treated with equity and respect with what they need. That’s very, very important to me.
EK: I always find that whenever I talk to you, there’s something that I learned that is new, that also, I’m triggered to also think more of what you have said all the time. So now, I’m thinking about the roles that we play in the different organizations. We bring the skills that we have, but our roles in embracing equity require us to bring the human beings that we are, and not just the skills.
TF: Absolutely. Each one of us bring a different perspective; if we are all open to considering those different perspectives and then join forces to come up with a solution, for example, or honestly, just opening it up, opening our mind to to thinking differently about the programs that we design and support in different places, in different countries, in different contexts—and not coming in with preconceived ideas about what needs to be done.
TF: That’s why I’m very proud of iDARE, because this is exactly what we do. We just bring the process to different communities and we enable them to exercise the power within, so there’s a lot of talk about empowerment. I believe that each person has extensive power – what we need to do as professionals is enable them to exercise that power. I’m a firm believer in that. Otherwise it would have been impossible for different populations to deal with the difficulties that they deal with every day. So each one of us has power, each one of us has resilience, and we just need to find ways to exercise that power from within and also respect others, to enable them and also to exercise their power. Only then can we achieve equity, because then each one of us will turn into a creative mind, if you will, to find solutions for their families, to find solutions for their communities so everybody can lead an equitable and fair life.
EK: Speaking of what you are proud of, you have highlighted that you’re very proud of WI-HER but also of iDARE. Can you tell me more about what other things, even highlight more on iDARE, you are proud of in your journey to advance equity, which, by the way, has been a long journey, and also highlight some of your personal wins?
TF: The biggest win I’m very proud of is when I hear from our colleagues that are working in different countries, I hear about their accomplishments, and I hear about the successes that communities that they work with have accomplished, I cannot begin to describe. There are no words to describe how I feel when we hear that viral load suppression gaps are closed, or when gender-based violence response has improved dramatically, or when we hear that, gaps in any health outcome that we are trying to achieve have have been reduced, and that all populations that we serve are really receiving the best care that they could possibly receive. I am so passionate about our work in different countries, about our work here in the US with different institutions. I’m very proud of my team. Extremely proud of my team. My biggest win also, in addition to – I have so many big wins, but one of the wins that I’m very proud of is having such a creative, diverse team that brings to us every day, something different, and something new. So we’re truly diverse with diverse backgrounds, in the where we come from, the nationalities, the origins, but we also are diverse in the way we think. And to me, that’s a very, very important component of diversity. I’m very proud of my team, so that’s also a big one that I am proud of.
EK: You have me beaming ear to ear. Well, we are coming to the close of our discussion. I don’t know if you have anything else you would want to talk about in line with this year’s Women’s Day – like a call to action. Anything you would want to tell anyone that’s listening?
TF: Thank you, Kemmy. Well, my final words, if you will, or a pearl, maybe I can share with others. If each one of us can think, what can they do today and every day? But let’s start with today, when they hear us talk about equity or in every day of their lives. What can I do today towards achieving equity for all? Maybe it sounds so big when I say equity for all. But if we, each one of us, takes one step towards that at the end of the journey, we will achieve equity. If every day we have a commitment to do one little thing, even in thought or in action, but also in thought is important because our thoughts drive our actions. So what can we do today to address a bias that, for example, I have, or what can I do to improve the way I think about others, or to improve the way I interact with others? When we have an open mind and we accept and we embrace, we will be able to achieve our goals towards equity, even small steps can lead us to reaching that goal. And thank you so much, Kemmy, for this opportunity to talk to you.
EK: Thank you very much, Taroub, for your time. I will take the opportunity to wish you a Happy Women’s Day at WI-HER! We are very inspired by you. Thank you for your dedication, for your leadership and your determination to make the world more inclusive and to advance equity. We are inspired by you, and we are also very glad to be on your team and to serve with you.
TF: Thank you. I’m very proud of you all. Thank you.
EK: Thank you very much to everyone who’s listening, I will take the opportunity to also wish you a Happy Women’s Day! Thank you for listening to the WI-HER podcast. Once again, I am Elizabeth Kemigisha, and I have been joined by Dr. Taroub Harb Faramand, who is our president and founder at WI-HER. I look forward to hearing from you in the comment section and have a great day!
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