Name: 【TED】Leila Hoteit: 3 lessons on success from an Arab businesswoman (3 lessons on success from an Arab businesswoman | Leila Hoteit)
Uploaded: 2016-09-13T13:01:17.000Z
Duration: 14 min 3 s
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It was an innocent question from my young daughter Alia

Alia was peering at a huge poster standing tall in the middle of the mall.

It featured the three rulers of the United Arab Emirates.

I bent down and explained that these were the rulers of the UAE

who had worked hard to develop their nation

She asked, "Mom, why is it that here where we live,

and back in Lebanon, where grandma and grandpa live,

we never see the pictures of powerful women on the walls?

This is probably the hardest question I've had to answer in my years as a parent

and in my 16-plus years of professional life, for that matter.

I had grown up in my hometown in Lebanon,

the younger of two daughters to a very hard-working pilot

and director of operations for the Lebanese Airlines

and a super-supportive stay-at-home mom and grandma.

My father had encouraged my sister and I to pursue our education

even though our culture emphasized at the time

that it was sons and not daughters who should be professionally motivated.

I was one of very few girls of my generation

Fast-forward a couple of decades, and I hope I didn't do too badly

in making my father proud of his would-be son.

As I got my Bachelor's and PhD in electrical engineering,

did R&D in the UK, then consulting in the Middle East,

I have always been in male-dominated environments.

Truth be told, I have never found a role model I could truly identify with.

My mother's generation wasn't into professional leadership.

There were some encouraging men along the way,

but none knew the demands and pressures I was facing,

pressures that got particularly acute when I had my own two beautiful children.

And although Western women love to give us poor, oppressed Arab women advice,

they live different lives with different constraints.

So Arab women of my generation have had to become our own role models.

We have had to juggle more than Arab men,

and we have had to face more cultural rigidity than Western women.

As a result, I would like to think that we poor, oppressed women

actually have some useful, certainly hard-earned lessons to share,

for anyone wishing to thrive in the modern world.

There is this word that everybody is touting as the key to success:

Well, what exactly is resilience, and how do you develop it?

I believe resilience is simply the ability to transform shit into fuel.

In my previous job, well before my current firm,

I was working with a man we will call John.

I had teamed up with John and was working hard,

and that he would come to support my case to make partner at the firm.

I was, in addition to delivering on my consulting projects,

writing passionately on the topic of women economic empowerment.

One day, I got to present my research to a roomful of MBA students.

listening for the first time to the details of my study.

I could see John in the corner of my eye.

and had slid under his chair in apparent shame.

I finished my presentation to an applauding audience

and we rushed out and jumped into the car.

I presented a couple of gender parity indices,

and some conclusions about the Arab world.

Yes, we do happen to be today at the bottom of the index,

but what is it that I said or presented that was not factual?"

To which he replied, "The whole premise of your study is wrong.

What you are doing is dangerous and will break the social fabric of our society."

"When women have children, their place is in the home."

and all I could think and repeat in the chaos of my brain was:

"You can forget about that partnership, Leila.

It took me a couple of days to fully absorb this incident and its implications,

but once I did, I reached three conclusions.

There may be many like him in our society,

but I would never let their issues become mine.

Two, that I needed another sponsor, and fast.

I got one, by the way, and boy, was he great.

And three, that I would get to show John what women with children can do.

I apply this lesson equally well to my personal life.

I have received many words of encouragement,

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【TED】Leila Hoteit: 3 lessons on success from an Arab businesswoman (3 lessons on success from an Arab businesswoman | Leila Hoteit)

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