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

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Registration is open NOW until Friday, October 27

That's a wrap on Season 2! 🎬

To celebrate, we changed the format of the episode a little bit. Grace Witter, Tech Sisters' founder and regular podcast host is on the other side of the table this time. She's being interviewed by one of Season 2's most popular guests, Esraa Qandeel.

Key lessons from this episode

1. Grace's experience transitioning from SAHM to frontend developer (4:15)
2. And then transitioning again into product management (13:30)
3. Grace's favourite moments from Tech Sisters (18:00)

Show Notes and Transcript: https://www.tech-sisters.com/2023/03/grace-witter/

Leave a Review: https://buff.ly/3o3ifG7

Patreon: patreon.com/techsisters

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.

Key lessons from this episode

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)

Show Notes and Transcript: https://www.tech-sisters.com/2023/03/insha-tazeen/

Leave a Review: https://buff.ly/3o3ifG7

Patreon: patreon.com/techsisters

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.

Key lessons from this episode

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)

Show Notes and Transcript: https://www.tech-sisters.com/2023/02/sanna-siddiqui/

Leave a Review: https://buff.ly/3o3ifG7

Patreon: patreon.com/techsisters

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!

In today's episode, Reham shares her knowledge and passion for product management, her 15 years of experience, and her insight into how to get into the profession. She also tells us about the amazing group she founded for Muslimahs in product - MVP!

Key lessons from this episode

1. At the core of product management is empathy, listening to people and adding value to their lives in whatever way you can (6:00)
2. Always look at the why and pull yourself back if you're solutionising instead of listening (10:00)
3. The question she gets asked all the time (hint: it's about how to get into product) (19:00)

Show Notes and Transcript: https://www.tech-sisters.com/2023/02/reham-fawad/

Leave a Review: https://buff.ly/3o3ifG7

Patreon: patreon.com/techsisters

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.

Key lessons from this episode

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)

Show Notes and Transcript: https://www.tech-sisters.com/2023/02/aaliya-khan/

Leave a Review: https://buff.ly/3o3ifG7

Patreon: patreon.com/techsisters

"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!

Key lessons from this episode

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)

Show Notes and Transcript: https://www.tech-sisters.com/2023/01/fatimah-akanbi/

Leave a Review: https://buff.ly/3o3ifG7

Patreon: patreon.com/techsisters

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.

Key Lessons From This Episode

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)

Show Notes and Transcript: https://www.tech-sisters.com/2023/01/nasrien-youness/

Leave a Review: https://buff.ly/3o3ifG7

Patreon: patreon.com/techsisters

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.

Key Lessons From This Episode

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)

Show Notes and Transcript: https://www.tech-sisters.com/2023/01/nasrien-youness/

Leave a Review: https://buff.ly/3o3ifG7

Patreon: patreon.com/techsisters

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!

Key Lessons From This Episode

• 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)

Show Notes and Transcript: https://www.tech-sisters.com/2023/01/alifya-kagalwalla/

Leave a Review: https://buff.ly/3o3ifG7

Patreon: patreon.com/techsisters