Women’s Day Webinar with WI-HER: Uplifting Women’s Leadership
Join us as we celebrate women’s leadership and discuss the pivotal moments that shape the career development of women.
During this insightful conversation moderated by Dr. Taroub Harb Faramand, hear from WI-HER alums and learn how they faced and overcame challenges throughout their career. With current work positions in locations all over the world, our panelists are leaders in localization and international development, and their stories will inspire you.
This webinar originally aired on Thursday, March 7, 2024.
Title: Uplifting Women’s Leadership: Inspiring Stories from WI-HER Alums
This free webinar is designed to showcase the importance of investing in women in various ways. Topics to be discussed include the role of mentorship, how individuals and companies alike can foster diverse leadership, and how the panelists’ overall career journeys have shaped their work in localization.
Our panelists include:
 | Dr. Esther Karamaji, USAID Uganda Esther has 15 years of knowledge and experience in public health in Africa. She recently won PEPFAR’s Lifetime Achievement Award & PEPFAR’s Lahya Shiimi award. Esther serves as a board member on multiple company boards and as an International Society for Quality (ISQua) Expert. In addition to WI-HER, she previously worked with University Research Co. as Chief of Party and Population Services International (PSI) in multiple roles. |
 | Katie Krueger: Foreign Service Officer, USAID, Bureau for Policy Katie is an international development professional & intersectional gender specialist. For the last 7 years, she led program design & implementation as the Director of Programs & Gender Focal Point at Atlas Relief & Development International (ARDI). She is committed to amplifying marginalized & least-heard voices, utilizing data and evidence-based practices to help inform interventions, and disrupting traditional development sector dynamics to champion grassroots efforts using locally designed and led approaches. |
 | Shahira Hussein: USAID Health Office Director, Egypt Dr. Hussein is a public health expert with 26+ years of experience in designing, implementing, & managing programs. She is the first locally employed staff to be assigned as Acting Office Director in USAID worldwide. Today she oversees a portfolio of $100+ million. In recognition of her achievements & leadership within USAID, received the prestigious “FSN Distinguished Career Leadership Award.” Dr. Hussein has also worked with several international organizations implementing USAID-funded health projects. |
 | Dr. Taroub Harb Faramand, WI-HER Founder and President (Moderator) Dr. Faramand has 35+ years of experience in the development sector. She started her career as a service provider and then assumed leadership positions as direct USAID staff, Chief of Party, and other roles, before starting WI-HER LLC in 2011. Her achievements and tireless commitment to service have earned her the Meritorious Award for exceptional achievements, the Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award from Emory University in 2008, and the 2022 USAID Alumni Association of the Year. |
Transcript of the full Women’s Day Webinar With WI-HER
Speakers:
- Dr. Taroub Faramand (TF)
- Katie Krueger (KK)
- Dr. Esther Nkolo (EN)
- Dr. Shahira Hussein (SH)
TF: Good day everyone, and thank you for joining us today for this session. Please tell us who you are, where you are connecting from, and drop your email so we can continue the conversation; it would be great for us to continue this important dialogue. Today it is my absolute pleasure and honor to welcome three amazing professionals to this panel. In the next hour, we will have an open discussion with Dr. Esther Nkolo, Dr. Shakira Hussein, and Katie Krueger about their personal career journey and how they dealt with challenges.
TF: We will explore the importance of not only inspiring inclusion, which is the main theme for this year’s International Women’s Day, but also the importance of practicing inclusion…in the workplace, and how being intentional about providing opportunities for growth leads to rapid career advancement and improved outcomes for all in different sectors that we work in.
TF: First, I will ask the panelists to introduce themselves briefly and then we will have an open discussion about mentorship, diversity, leadership, and other themes i the time allows us to do so. Please feel free to ask questions, drop them in the chat. We already received your questions when people registered, and we will try our best to answer all your questions today, and if we do not have enough time, we will definitely answer your questions via email. I’ll start with introducing myself, which I should have done when I opened the session. My name is Taroub Faramand, I’m the president and founder of WI-HER, and I have been working in development for a very long time. We started the company 13 years ago and we’re very excited about today’s session. So I will start by asking Dr. Esther Nkolo to introduce herself briefly. Esther?
EK: Greetings to you all. I’m called Esther Nkolo. I work with USAID Uganda as a program management specialist. My area is…in the space of public health quality improvement across multiple technical areas, and I do have a PhD related to that. Thank you, Taroub.
TF: Thank you, Esther… for introducing yourself. I want to say a few words about Esther. I met Esther in 2011, 13 years ago when I, during a visit to Uganda, my goal was to start integrating gender in quality improvement projects… Esther was one of the first people who welcomed the idea of integrating gender and addressing social issues to improve health outcomes in Uganda. The first time I met Esther, she struck me as being so calm, but also so strong, such a strong personality, confident, knows her stuff really well, and since then, Esther and I have been working together in different capacities, so we welcome you, Esther.
EN: Thank you.
TF: Okay, so we’re gonna move to Dr. Shahira Hussein, go ahead Shahira.
SH: Hello everyone. So my name is Shahira Hussein, and I am a medical doctor by training and a public health expert by practice. I have been working with USAID mission in Cairo, Egypt for the last 13 years and prior to this, I was working for USAID-funded projects for another 13 years. Over to you.
TF: Wonderful Shahira. Thank you. So I met Shahira in 2002, 22 years ago, a very long time. I was at the time working for USAID mission in the West Bank and Gaza, and I was on a TDY in Egypt, and Shahira impressed me with her positive attitude and cheerfulness, no matter what the challenges she faces. So one story, the first day I met Shahira.. I remember the air conditioning unit. The window unit fell on your red car, your new car, right? And you dealt with this challenge so well. I mean, of course, it’s very disturbing but yet, it talks about your incredible personality and your confidence and how you deal with different challenges, like you’re a person who would say, ‘let the challenges come to me. I will deal with them.’
SH: Yes!
TB: It’s my pleasure to have you with us today. Katie, go ahead.
KK: Hi, everyone. Happy International Women’s Day. It’s so nice to meet everyone and talk together. My name is Katie Krueger, and I’m the Director of Programs and the gender focal point for Atlas Relief and Development International or ARDI. It’s nice to meet you all…
TF: Welcome, Katie. I met Katie 10 years ago, Katie started working with us at WI-HER as an intern, and Katie, you have done such an incredible job as an intern, and then as a consultant, and then as a former staff of WI-HER. You struck me as inquisitive, willing to do anything that you are asked to do. You’re always eager to learn and to do much more than you are supposed to do. So you’re always also doing incredible work and it’s a pleasure to be with you here today.
TF: I have to say this session is really heartwarming to me, because I am meeting with…incredible professionals, incredible leaders, who I have had the pleasure to work with for a long time and I wanted to share their stories with you. So I will start by asking Katie, how important was having a mentor in your professional development career, and how did the mentorship shape you and shape where you are today?
KK: Thank you so much. Great question. I think looking back, you know, in preparation for this call, I looked back over my professional career, the connections that I’ve built over time, and it really struck me that I think every single opportunity I have been able to participate in, to support, has been initiated by another woman, another leader has helped open the door for me to either learn something or participate in something or be a leader in a new way and that really is quite striking and quite incredible that there’s so many women in this world who are willing to open doors for other women and create space for them where maybe there wasn’t space for them in the past. So looking back, as Taroub said, I began much of my professional career in a more formal way… working with WI-HER, and I had a chance to be able to start really at the bottom level, at the very entry-level opportunity to share my skills as an intern to learn a huge amount and really grow professionally. And I don’t think that would have been possible without mentors giving me a chance and seeing my potential, even though I didn’t have a substantial amount of experience at that point. But because I was able to have other women see my potential and recognize that I was ambitious and that I just needed a chance, it really made a lot happen for me, and, of course, hard work goes into that, but really, sometimes it comes down to having people allow you to step up, and of course along with that comes a complexity of different levels of privileges and experiences as well. But I think having mentors help guide the way is an essential component of growth that not everyone unfortunately has the opportunity to have and I hope that changes over time.
TF: Thank you, Katie, so much. I’d like to ask Shahira to comment and talk about her journey as well, and how mentorship affected you, Shahira?
SH: Of course… throughout my career, I always had like a number of mentors who have… helped me grow my career and advance the path of my career. I want to say that this started by our very facilitator of this session, Dr. Taroub Faramand, and and also it has continued over the years. Typically, I mean, I learned through two different ways, either by observation. So I mean, when I watch I observe my mentor, like the way they talk, the way they carry themselves, the way they keep high standards of professionalism and of integrity, and I learned from all of this, not only through observation, but also through… engaging in deep and engaging conversations and candid conversations where they can show me different perspectives. They show me how to deal with different types of personalities in a professional setting. They need all of this, either through observations or through engaging in different kinds of conversations. I learned a lot from a number of mentors, and I am a very strong believer in that women support women in work, when they rise above competitions, they can do a lot to help each other.
TF: Thank you, Shahira. You reached a senior position with USAID; you’re now the acting office director, right?
SH: That’s correct.
TF: How did mentorship help you reach that level? I mean, this is a very senior position with USAID. Congratulations.
SH: Thank you. Thank you very much. So I mean, our mission is very supportive of locally employed staff or as we call them Foreign Service nationals, and last year, a decision was made to establish an FSN-led or a locally employed staff-led Office of Health and Population, and we are in the recruitment process now and I am in the acting position. If it wasn’t for all these wonderful women around me, I wasn’t be able to to assume this responsibility. I currently have like a number of really truly wonderful women around me, if you don’t mind, I would like to mention them by names. So I have Margaret Sancho, our deputy mission director, and I also have a couple of senior health advisors and these are Gillion Lyon-Powers and Lisa Childs, and they are very supportive. Really. I go to them, they mentor me, they show me the way. I mean because I moved also from managing programs to managing the people and relationships and it’s very different and there is a lot of also, you know, engaging with the front office admission director, our deputy Mission Director, the interior at the State Department, the embassy, so it has a lot more than like managing programs, and I’m learning every single day, but I’m also really truly very grateful to all the wonderful women around me who are supporting me very much.
TF: Wonderful Shahira. Thank you so much. The importance of investing in people and trusting people… leads to incredible accomplishments. Thank you, Shahira. We’re going ask Dr. Esther to share with us some thoughts about mentorship.
EN: All right, thank you. I think like Katie and Shahira said, I look out for people who have recently achieved what I’m trying to achieve. These are the people I look for as mentors and you’ll find that they’re going to be my supervisors, the ladies near me, and so those are the people who helped me to navigate new spaces. There are people who are far off, like in Uganda we have the [unclear], who headed the Uganda Investment Authority. Those are people you see on the TV or the internet, they are far off, those are the ones I use more for inspiration, goal setting, and visions, but it’s the ones who are close to me and many people here before the call was saying how Taroub is one of the most passionate and persistent mentors. She has been that for me, and also ladies like her who are close, accessible. This really gets you going very fast through the work space or any new space.
EN: I moved from clinical medicine to public health working with such a mentor. I moved from local to international space working with such a mentor, but I’ve also been mentored by male mentors, although I wasn’t deliberate about choosing female or male. And although, as we’ve said, we end up with female mentors mostly because they have similar challenges. I’ve also had some male mentors who have guided me to hit some milestones like going to study, which universities and jobs to go for. So these have also been helpful, but it’s really mostly been the female mentors who have, who I’m able to call or chat with and get through day-to-day challenges and actually, these are always or almost always in the workspace. And I appreciate that… from them.
TF: Thank you, Esther. It’s such a pleasure to hear you talk about also male mentors, men mentors. It’s very important that we also mention that, and I appreciate your thoughts. You indeed moved from working local to working global, and now you are working with USAID in Uganda so we are very, very proud of where you are right now, all of you.
TF: Alright, we are going to move on to talk about diversity in the workplace and the importance of diversity and I wanted to hear your thoughts. I will ask Shahira to talk to us about her views and whether you know, do you think we have closed the gap between men and women in terms of leadership? I mean, there has been a shift, right, in leadership now but do you see this, and explain how this gap has been closed or changed in your opinion?
SH: So I mean, a lot of progress has been accomplished in terms of closing the gap. However, a lot has still to be achieved… For instance, in the Middle East region, and more specifically in Egypt for instance, there is a lot of women who are now like ministers of, I mean are in the cabinet for example, and the number is growing every time the cabinet changes.
SH: I have to say also that they are typically in charge of certain ministries that are typically for women to be in charge of. So this is like, for example, a difference in assuming leadership roles, but it is only confined to certain ministries… this is at the national level. At a more local level, USAID has been very supportive to providing access for girls and young women to a career, or… before career, even education opportunities such as scholarships or…a vocational training, and also access, improving access to job opportunities, especially in science and technology. So these are all very good steps. However, a lot hasn’t been yet done in terms of closing the pay gap, in terms of even the perceptions of women in leadership. The judgment, the treatment, the unconscious bias, all these are things that I am personally subject to, I feel it all the time. However, I have made a conscious effort not to let this discourage me, because stepping into a leadership position, I knew that I would be faced with stuff like this. It happens every single day. However, I am very determined that I will not let this make me shy away. So this is what I mean by there is a lot to be achieved.
SH: One more thing in general, sometimes organizations are—I’m not talking about any particular organization now, I’m talking in general—sometimes organizations, they have the best intentions and the will to diversify their workforce and to be more inclusive. However, if the systems and the mechanics are not ready to do this and to support these decisions, things can be challenging. In order for leadership to be inclusive, it takes all levels of the organization, from the highest to the lowest… very important to support those who are in leadership positions.
TF: Thank you, Shahira, so much. We have a question about personal challenges and how would one deal with the role as a woman, as a wife, as a mother, or just as a professional? And how can you balance your role as a leader and your role as a person in this society? So even though I wanted to ask the question later… it comes so natural to ask it right now. Shahira, if you can talk about this a little bit and then we’ll move on to Katie and Esther.
SH: Basically, it’s all about like prioritizing, like I cannot focus on my family only or on my career only, it’s a matter of what is important now at this point in time. It’s for me to prioritize and to decide which aspect of my life I’m going to focus on. I continuously and with my colleagues and… other women in leadership positions, we continue to advocate for policies that support work-life balance. I mean, we have like a lot of policies such as the situation… working and to be honest, I want also to say that when I feel overwhelmed, I ask for help. I have people like within my family or even colleagues at work. I am not shy to ask for help, because it’s natural. We, I mean, we all do, and we shouldn’t be shy of doing this. And also, I try as much as I can to advance my career, while not, this shouldn’t come at the expense of my family and vice versa, so as much as I can, I do.
TF: Thank you, Shahira.
SH: Can I add one more thing? I set realistic goals for myself. I don’t overwhelm myself with goals that are not attainable. I have my capabilities, I know that I have a limited amount of time, a limited amount of energy physically and mentally, so I don’t overwhelm myself with setting up goals that are not realistic.
TF: Thank you Shahira. This is a very good point because usually, women work two, three times more because we want to improve ourselves, not only improve, but make a point that we can do it, and we want to be the superwomen basically, trying to do everything. But we all know that women work harder because we want to prove that we can do it, that we can still play our roles that the society imposes on us in different cultures, and also be career women and it’s not easy. It comes at a very high high price, I would say. So thank you so much for sharing your thoughts. I want to go to Esther and ask her if you can add to what Shahira mentioned about diversity and add a point. Are you seeing growth in other aspects of diversity in leadership? And what else can we do to continue to grow a more diverse leadership?
EN: Okay, so I think I’ll start by saying that I really studied in a good… school in the country and therefore I’m surrounded by people from those schools that are now female leaders in all sectors engineering, medical, everywhere, international and local, and also working in healthcare, [I] find a lot of outstanding female leaders because healthcare is dominated by female, so for me, finding a female leader or meeting leaders who are female, it’s not unusual. But I still find people who are surprised or don’t expect leaders to be female people, for example, who assume all doctors are men, or people who walk past the leader and go to the nearest male and they have to be then shown and told to go back and shake the right hands of the right female boss. This still happens around, so because of that, I’m generally aware that we haven’t yet reached where we want to be. And so I think that there is a lot more space for us to expand this work we’ve done with women in leadership.
EN: When you go to, when I speak with my colleagues who are female leaders, they talk about things which make sense to me. For example, do we need to have more telework for perimenopausal women, because there are days when they can’t leave home. But you will not find this normal talk in other spaces where their male leaders because they don’t think of that. So because of these types of things I see around me, I know that we haven’t hit it yet with this diversity with this group. And then there are other groups of course that needs space. It’s not only female leaders, I know here, where it’s a lot of young people—young people are not in any leadership positions. Maybe they’re still in school, but at least you’ve started to see innovative ways to bring them to the conversation in different meetings and different decision making points.
EN: For example, yesterday, I was reading about an organization that has listened to young people and taken a very innovative financial solution to secondary schools here where they can access money because they don’t have ATMs. They don’t have mobile money for phones and so on but they’ve taken… a solution just following their feedback, not their parents, so social media and so on is bringing these voices to the table. I’m also specifically worried about people with disabilities because they’re not yet there. They don’t have anyone speaking for them. Most of them are just a few isolated organizations and they don’t get to the decision-making table. So you know, I usually wonder who speaks for these but I strongly believe that we need to expand access to decision-making to all, each and every category of people in our communities. And I think politicians have a big role to play once we have these categories of people in political space. They get watched on TV, on Internet all the time and it inspires other people like them to go forward to try and I really think that that is the line that needs to be pushed for us to take this to the next level.
TF: Thank you so much, Esther, very important points. I like you, you keep repeating when you see people, you get inspired, you see them on TV, you see them in leadership positions, you get inspired, so inspiring inclusion and practicing inclusion is really very important. So thank you so much, Esther. I’d like to hear from Katie, her thoughts, especially Katie, you worked in areas of political unrest, you worked with Syrian refugees, and you worked in different settings. So share with us your thoughts, please.
KK: Absolutely. I mean, it’s hard to add so much to—the other speakers have covered so many important areas but maybe looking at it from more of a grassroots level. The one thing that I really have seen through my work, which has substantially focused on supporting communities inside of Syria, as well as refugees in the diaspora, but often working with local organizations inside of Syria, on the ground, especially areas that are still quite in the early recovery stages after being completely isolated in northeastern Syria, completely controlled by ISIS and other armed groups. And at this point, there’s been several years of development and growth and there’s an emerging civil society on the ground, but you know, every single day, we still face challenges with a lot of our partners not having a very inclusive staff among their teams, and also having trouble with understanding the importance of really engaging the hardest to reach community members and not simply relying on maybe their long established networks, or the people that are easiest to reach. And I think that that’s part of the capacity building support that we’ve really tried to emphasize a lot is initially starting out with having requirements on making sure that women are funded through our projects, you know, having gender-sensitive budgeting, and making sure that that funding is directed to ensure that women are involved and they have meaningful roles. They’re not just involved to, you know, provide supporting efforts, but they’re really in key positions and making sure that that’s kind of a requirement of the project has been an initial successful approach. But you know, it can’t stop there. It needs to also grow in and trickle out into the communities that we work in.
KK: Another area, just looking at it from a grassroots perspective, is a lot of our projects currently work specifically to support people with physical disabilities. And especially when you look at it intersectionally and look at women with physical disabilities, the challenges that they face regularly are just astronomically difficult. It’s really hard for them to be able to even access opportunities physically, having the chance to exist in spaces that should be meant for them, but because they might not even have something as simple as a ramp to enter an office might mean that they don’t have the chance to have a role that they’re well qualified for. So one thing that we’ve been really working on through our organization is working with employers on the ground inside of different communities, working with vocational trainers, and really emphasizing that it’s not the fact that we need to choose the people that fit the curriculum or fit the role in terms of what they can physically do or what types of skills they would be qualified for physically, but we need to adapt the environment or we need to adapt… …but look at the environments in which they’re operating. Did I lose you? I feel like—
TF: You’re good. You broke up a little bit on my end, maybe it’s my internet, but thank you so much Katie for these important points. While you were talking, to my mind comes the issue of safety in the workplace and the importance of safety in the workplace where many men and women, and other groups as well as persons with disabilities, members of the LGBTQIA community face challenges related to either bullying or harassment of any sort. Sexual harassment is a big issue we need to always think about and discuss. We at WI-HER work diligently to make sure that the safety in the workplace is at the top of the priorities in addition to other priorities as well. But we feel strongly about improving and securing safety in the workplace for all, so people can excel and can feel comfortable coming up with new ideas.
You know, we provide a platform for people to innovate, to create, to voice their opinions, and and also to be heard. So I just wanted to emphasize those issues, and thank you all so much for your thoughts.
TF: I want to move on and talk about localization, the hot topic that everybody now is talking about, and you know, not only USAID is moving in that direction, but also other donors, even private donors, are now moving in the direction of localization. So we at WI-HER have been, since the beginning of the company, that is our motto basically to work with local professionals, local organizations, to implement and innovate and come up with solutions that make sense to the country that we work in… you all know our methodology iDARE. I’m not going to talk about it now. If anybody’s interested, check it out on our website. But I wanted to talk about what else we should do to ensure localization: is it only providing funding to local organizations directly or does it go beyond providing the funding and how can we invest in local professionals so they can lead development in their own countries? And Esther, I’m gonna start with you for this question. If you don’t mind, go ahead.
EN: Okay, thank you. I’ll start from where you’ve added really the need to build a pool of local experts. And I know that you may not know this Taroub but when I was joining University, I was in a class that the government decided to give 1.5 extra points to qualify for university to only the female candidates. So because of that, I got full government scholarship for medical school, and I think these are some of the things that can be done locally, where we are. We still did girls— I mean, that was over 20 years ago—we still need girls to get a helping hand today, so that they qualify for these positions and to contribute to localization. For example, because what I see is that when there is a shake, many things are affected but women are affected a lot.
EN: When I looked at the university admissions just after COVID, it was obvious that the professional courses had zero or very few female admissions. There were almost all men, being male candidates, that got in because the girls could not sit the exams in those circumstances. They had had babies, they were responsible, the society [was] still giving the girls the responsibilities that affect their progress, and so because of that, even the things we do, any little instability, shakes them. So we need to still continue to do such things, put women in this position so that they can make decisions that help them continue to build a pool.
EN: So I’ve been a female leader for several years now and as localization takes root, opportunities for local leaders and therefore female local leaders increase and I’ve seen a lot of people I’ve worked with or supported directly take on jobs, Chief of Party or like jobs or executive director like jobs, and from where I sit, I try to make sure that the female local leaders that I need, as the organization because you’ll find in for example, in the civil society or in the small, community-based organization, there are a lot of female leaders but they’ve not been in these bigger organizations. But now with localization, these organizations are growing, and they’re being supported to take on more and more. So the female leaders are starting to appear. And so you find that you need to understand what they’re going through, understand how they’re managing their perspective so that we modify the support we provide so that they succeed and this obviously is a product of several years of investment in the girl child that now has led to these females being able to compete, even now without any special consideration they can compete favorably with male counterparts and take on these positions so they can get an organization and register it and grow it from zero to a huge local organization, just as you did with WI-HER, Taroub. So, these are becoming more and more with localization. We see this happening a lot more, and we are really proud of that and happy to support it.
TF: Thank you so much, Esther, very important point that investing in people is as important as providing funding for organizations, and I’m really delighted to hear you talk about small civil society organizations rising. We still need to do much more to build the capacity of those small organizations led by women, especially to be able to really implement effective development solutions. So thank you so much for your thoughts. I’m gonna move on to Katie and then I will ask you Shahira to express your thoughts.
KK: Thank you. Yeah, I think that localization has really become so—I’m so happy to see how at the forefront of many different donors, on larger INGOs and also local NGOs, is really at the forefront of conversations that I’m seeing in the development space in the areas that I work in. And I think one thing that’s changed a lot over the years and I think it’s something that still needs to develop, but I really have seen a shift in terms of really valuing the experiences and the areas of expertise, the lived realities, that local communities are facing and that they know their context best obviously, but so many times, donors will come in and, you know, propose projects that may work in theory, but do they work in reality and oftentimes they might not be contextualized enough and they may not have had enough of the local leaders from a wide variety of different sectors, their feedback, when it comes to designing that project and so oftentimes, the intentions are fantastic, but the implementation just doesn’t function the way it should or it causes unintentional harm.
KK: So when—one thing that we’ve really pushed to incorporate into all of the programming that I lead through ARDI, is to make sure that all of our local CSO partners on the ground are directly engaged in designing their own projects. So yes, there’s funding but it’s never given to them with the expectation that it’s a project we hand to them, that you know, this international organization is giving them requirements to a very localized level. It’s very much a flexible, grassroots-led approach where funding is available, capacity building is available, but they’re really given the chance to design what works in their communities and oftentimes you see that the outcome is a lot different than you would have expected or maybe the approaches they use might not have come out during the initial conceptualization of the project, but it really works to achieve the aim. But without being able to work side by side in partnership and build that connection between the local community and maybe the international donors or decision makers without having those platforms of communication and learning from each other. Those kinds of changes may not come out until it’s too late. So I think that that approach has really increased over the years that I’ve seen and I hope it continues because it’s making a big impact.
TF: Yes, thank you, Katie, very important points. We all believe in localization, of course. And this is the way to improve development outcomes when solutions are identified and implemented and monitored and led by local professionals. How do you see, Shahira, the opportunities to collaborate between international, for example, small companies like WI-HER and who bring innovation, right? And who have been doing a lot of work internationally, and other small companies, small organizations that have the technical expertise, to build and maybe bring this innovation to local organizations so they can grow faster and provide the support that the country needs. Shahira, how do you see this collaboration?
SH: So I believe we need to be intentional in terms of, like we need to be looking at the strengths of local organizations, and to be ready to build capacity to coach and to work hand in hand to transfer the needed set of skills. That is, I need to create a full-fledged partner. So I mean, we need to make a conscious effort to build the capacity of local organizations and to transfer to them the know-how of international organizations. I would like also to add that it’s not only local NGOs but also I mean small businesses owned by women. It’s very important. It’s part of the development because once they are financially independent, and they are empowered, they have their own small businesses. It’s very important to also support these businesses and to provide everything that we can in our management interest, of course, to support them.
TF: Thank you, Shahira. So the challenge here, if I may voice my my thoughts. I mean, that would be great, if we have enough people that can, at the donor, from the donor side, to manage a large number of even small grants or small funding opportunities for women-led businesses. The challenge that we face now of course, we have been facing in the development sector all along, is the insufficient number of people who can manage and who can report, you know, the financial risk here needs to be addressed, right? Not only the programmatic risk, and we are seeing that we have the pool of funding, the funding is pooled, and then the amount of funding is large, right? And then small businesses led by women are excluded from the opportunities that are now offered to local NGOs and local entities to receive direct funding from USAID. I would really encourage you, encourage Esther and Katie later, because Katie is moving forward with her career, just watch where Katie is moving; we’re very excited for her development. You can influence the scene; I mean, we need more voices advocating for better collaboration between locals and internationals, and then finding ways to support women, small owned small businesses locally, because as we see the funding is pooled and is going to very large organizations with large US companies, and we end up with the same cycle right. So we really need your voices and your thoughts to influence the scene.
TF: Do you have any advice to young professionals, because we’ve received several messages about striking a balance and Shahira, you did talk about striking a balance, being a woman and also a professional. I’d like to hear from Esther. How can you—how are you striking that balance? I know your children are such incredible students; your daughter is now studying in Germany, how could you do this? And then what is your advice to young professionals moving forward with their careers?
EN: Yes, I think one of the things that actually women face when they want to move their careers forward is paying for education because the resources in the household, if they come from the man, they’re going to pay for education of the man and, or the lady, she’s going to volunteer or just give up because she wants her children to study. So that’s one of the things I had to figure out early and working with my family. My husband—we were able to just work on the total finances and just figure out how to pay for them, just looking long term at how the family in general would benefit and we then had to just, first of all, you have to be earning money yourself so that you can take a portion of that to pay your costs of your growth. And then… you then use the rest fairly to make sure everyone else is also growing.
EN: But I found them, a lot of the times, when people professionals ask these questions of females, it comes down to how do you get some of that money in the household to pay for your own growth while you would rather pay for your children in Germany or in other universities or you’d rather support the house family to get more things. So that’s really a dedicated thing that has to be taken month by month. And what also helps a lot is open conversation and communication with everyone in the household. All my children know what my university costs and where the money comes from and what we are sacrificing for each one of us to study and also to just, to the other side of it, the household and how it’s run. We always have to work with another; we have, as you know, extended family networks that are able to support with the children when they are younger. I’ve worked a lot with my mom to take care of the kids when they were younger and then as they grow that you cannot stay with the traditional male / female roles. My husband has to pick up some of my roles. I had to pick up some of these traditional roles because I was also earning money. And so you just have to, we have had to organize things in the house to what suits our situation, not necessarily import the norms from the society around that and, and we’ve had a lot of success, at least that’s what people tell us, and so I just encourage the ladies to just keep going, communicating, planning, and working with, first of all, find your own resources. You cannot be dependent on someone else. That’s the starting point, and then start to work on the rest together with your family.
TF: Thank you, Esther, for your thoughts. Not everybody has the chance to have external support, right? The fact that some women have in some countries is great. We received a question—I’d like to ask you that question.
TF: There are women out there who are very talented, they do not have the financial means to advance their education so they can have better career opportunities. What are the opportunities that are out there that will not cost much but they can, you know, advance their career by gaining more experience, for example, and working on new and different avenues to improve their career path. Esther?
EN: Okay, so in these days, there is a new wave of adult education which is very helpful, because you’re in the workspace but… you may not have resources but you can access a lot of material online that helps you be more skilled. For example, if the world is going digital and you need some analytics to take the next job, you can pick that up. So I found these days that a lot of people are doing that, so that they can have additional skills that help them to get a promotion really.
EN: Now there are the other group of people who have not even entered the workspace. So those ones really, we need to help them; they can’t do it on their own. People need to look out for them and help them so at least in Uganda, where I am, there’s a lot of individuals supporting individuals, but there are still very many that need support. And so the government has had to put up… development models and all sorts of models to make sure the people can access some money, some income generating activities. But what I have to say is that we cannot continue to move the rest of us who are earning some money and ignore the rest of the girls and even boys who need support. And when you move through our society, it’s quite normal to find most working people have two three friends of vulnerable people that they take care of financially. And so the society just has to operate like that because there are people who can’t do it by themselves.
TF: Thank you, Esther. Thank you so much. I also would like to add that the degree is very important, but also the experience is very important, like opening up opportunities for professionals in the workplace, and trust them. Trust is very important. Trust them to fail and… give them the chance to fail and to not worry about experiencing and experimenting, new roles, new functions. This I observed over the years helps professionals grow really, really fast. I mean, Katie, you remember, we together went to Lesotho and Uganda and you were still very, you know, just entering your career, but you were trusted with this effort. Esther is smiling, because you remember that.
EN: Yeah, I remember many times.
TF: You remember many times, but that’s important because you—giving you that opportunity and trusting you with it, it really affected how you started viewing yourself and your ability and taking more and more chances. Katie, can you talk to us about that really briefly?
KK: Yes, definitely. I think just the chance to try something new and to know that no matter whether it’s super successful or whether there is a lessons learned in the experience, it really does build confidence. I’ve definitely drawn from the experience and the trust I was given and kind of it creates a foundation in your soul almost that you can rely on in the future. And also I think it’s something that once you’ve had that experience, you want to do the same for others. You know, you want to help create spaces for others to do the same. So it has this trickle-down effect absolutely. When I was going on the trips, there were many times, where it was the first time I was trying something. It was the first time I was supporting maybe a training session or a type of report that I had to write and just the fact that I was given so much respect to try my best and to submit something and got feedback on that, and it was really a growth, a growth inspiring experience that I’ve taken with me and I’ve tried to share with others in my career.
TF: That’s excellent. So providing those opportunities for people who are interested and willing and want to advance in their career is very, very important. Thank you, Katie.
TF: Shahira, we received a question from the audience, from Sandra, who is asking why is it taking so long to… embrace localization? As you know, local involvement and leadership leads to better outcomes, and I’ve seen this since the beginning of my career in the mid-80s, a very long time ago, and many of you also observed the same. So yet, you know, many, many years fast forward, we’re still facing the challenges in getting donors to accept a participatory approach. For example, you know, the way we apply iDARE, it’s a participatory methodology. It yields incredible results, and yet when we want to present a methodology that works well, we still face a pushback from from donors. Tell us a little bit more about your thoughts, and why do you think this is still happening?
SH: Um… I’ll tell you my experience from… local organizations in Egypt and not worldwide. I mean, I’m not talking about Washington-based organization, I’m talking about like grassroots level organization. To be honest, my experience has shown me that the outreach, the outreach is excellent, and the trust between them and the community is really really very high. However, when it comes also to… the set of skills and the competencies that are needed to deal for instance, with USAID, they are lacking many of these skills. Like I’ve worked with one local organization, you know, because I don’t know if you’re aware or not, but USAID, we have… set objectives or targets, like a certain percentage of the funds should go to local organization. It’s small, it’s not that big, but it gets bigger as we go over the years.
SH: And to be honest, it was very time consuming for me and, I mean, it was not easy. I mean to get them for example, to develop an M&E plan or even to… write a quarter report. It was rewarding at the end because capacity was built, but this took a lot of effort and back and forth and back and forth saying it was not easy. So there needs to be some sort of building capacity, and I know we’ve been talking about building capacity of local organizations for the last decades. However, maybe we need, you need something really meaningful, where you build the capacity of the local staff so that the set of skills and competencies are there coupled with the… target of also having a certain percentage of funds going to a local organization between these two. Hopefully, things can get better for local organizations over.
TF: Thank you so much. Any final words of advice to young professionals?
SH: I mean, can I say something? I mean, I would, yes. So I would advise young professionals to work very hard on like creating a network of… allies, having very good relationships because to be honest, when you are you have like productive relationships, it helps you a lot. And you can advance your career and you can succeed. Also to try to maintain high standards of integrity, because this will create… a good reputation for you and… will make you gain the trust of everyone, and this is where you can succeed.
TF: Thank you so much Shahira. Katie, do you have a few final words or thoughts that you’d like to share?
KK: Definitely. I mean, I think that:
People, especially women, are often maybe a little bit nervous to ask for what they want sometimes in certain contexts, and so what I found is that when I’ve been brave enough to ask for support or to position myself in a space that I know I deserve to be in. It is scary, but I think sometimes and most of the time when you are brave enough to try and you do that there’s many people that are willing to support you in that space or to help you reach the goal that you want to reach. So I think sometimes asking for what you want, can actually lead really far
and as you know, having a network to help you do that and give you the bravery and the skills to achieve that is really helpful. I think when you are in a position of leadership, creating more spaces for diversity, for inclusion, for growth is really critical, especially if you can lower barriers to access, make requirements less, less difficult to achieve…
TF: Thank you so much, Katie. Thank you. We are at time but just a few seconds, Esther, if you can tell us your final words before we close.
EN: Okay. I’ll just say one thing to the young girls. Your society will not give you opportunities to lead. You will not grow up into a full grown adult when you’ve not spoken to a public audience ever. So you need to look for those opportunities, take them at school, at home, everywhere. Lead anything you can lead, practice so that you develop your style. It will help you a lot later.
TF: Thank you so much, Esther. Thank you Katie. Thanks, Shahira. It has been such a pleasure. Practicing, inspiring, and practicing inclusion is critical. Your willingness to learn your inquisitive mind were very, very instrumental in bringing you to where you are and we really appreciate you so much. I am extremely proud of you, and it is such a heartwarming session for me personally. So thank you so much. Thank you everyone for joining us. We will continue the conversation; we will answer all your questions that we couldn’t answer via email. Thank you so much and have a great day…
SH: Thank you for the opportunity.
TF: Of course. Always. Thank you so much.
KK: Thank you. It was lovely to connect with everyone.
EN: Thank you.