Today was the third day in the Virtual Women Championship organized by 360 Experiential Solutions under the Auspices of the National Council for Women & in partnership with ExxonMobil. And the day ended with a panel discussion among 2 astonished women & a great moderator/third speaker who created a smooth discussion that helped in sharing different experiences under the topic of being an entrepreneur to learn from in this amazing network. The panel discussion was moderated by Dina El Mofty & the discussion went among Dina Aly, Dr. Noha Khater, and Dina El Mofty.
Dina El Mofty is the co-founder of Injaz Egypt which caters more than 500,000 young people through schools & universities to learn more around entrepreneurship, being ready for the working environment, and caters more than 50 start-ups through the incubator.
Dina Aly is the co-founder of Matter a branding start-up that offers the branding services to different companies & teaching the community that the branding is much more than a logo. Then, she co-founded Bruze a company for nutritional bars.
Dr. Noha Khater is the co-founder of Almouneer which offers an online medical service to people with eye problems caused by Diabetes. Her startup helps the patients to save a record of all of the medical history, tests, prescription, and the progression as well.
And the panel discussion started with asking what encouraged you to get out of your comfort zone & become an entrepreneur. In other words, what triggers you to become an entrepreneur.
Dina El Mofty said that her experience was different, being a fresh graduate, newly married, and an expecting mother. She was also passionate about preparing the youth to the workforce. So, when she got the external opportunity to train & coach young adults on entrepreneurship and entering the workforce she grabbed the opportunity along with her co-founder Dalia Helal. And both Dina & Dalia worked together to balance their strengths & weaknesses together founding Injaz Egypt.
Dina Aly’s experience was quite different. After graduating & being employed in the advertising sector for some time, she got pregnant with her first child so upon giving birth she took the decision to become a stay-at-home mother despite being a workaholic. But as an extremist by nature, she would either be a working woman or a stay-at-home mother. When her first baby was two, she got pregnant again. Which led to staying at home for 4 year. After that her company tried to hire her back as a part-timer working for half day only to balance between taking care of her kids & going back to work. Despite being experienced in advertising, she has decided to explore the branding sphere. So, along with her partner they took an apartment & started doing everything together.
After that, she started to be passionate about endurance sports to distress from being an entrepreneur.
Noha Khater ranked the first in the medicine school - Kasr Einy, so she has decided to specialize in Ophthalmology & specialized in Retina surgeries. Then came an entrepreneurship opportunity when she started to deal with chronic patients with diabetes in which cases they require the same tests & medications 1-2 times monthly. And some of the patients weren’t documenting the medical history or the previous examinations or the previous medications. Noha met her partner & Chief Technology Officer Rania to start developing the software & apply it in Noha’s clinic as a pilot with minimal equipment to run the basic software that they have started with. The software showcased the patient data on screens & compiled the full medical plan along with the progression in an easy presentation.
With some bank loans, they were able to expand to 7 branches with fully digital clinics. They have even implemented the system in more clinics not only the clinics of Dr. Noha.
Then came the common question around the challenges they have faces as female entrepreneurs in Egypt.
Dina El Mofty stated that her biggest challenge was being young & not easily accepted in the work environment. And she has faced this challenge through being persistent. The second challenge was to balance her family needs besides building her business, and this one was solved through the support system she had from a supportive business partner, supportive husband, and supportive parents who turned to be supportive grand parents as well. Dina emphasized on the importance of having a mental - physical - spiritual alignment,
Dina Aly stated that her challenges we mainly in choosing her partners wisely. There was always a gap between the time she wished to allocate for everything in her life & the actual time she was able to allocate. And she worked on facing those challenges through listening to her intuition & went for it. In addition to work on finding the balance, through knowing how she feels & how to take rest to recover.
Noha Khater was challenging the traditional practices from a woman specialized in Retina to a doctor who fought the traditional way people do medicine in Egypt. She was raised that there is no difference between being a male or a female, however being a female gives you the edge to be distinguished. She has also faced all of the challenges she has faced through accepting the help when offered & hired the help needed when she was able to afford it to make her life a bit easier. Moreover, she never ignored her kids, on the other hand she used to include them in all of the conversations to take a glimpse of the real-life challenges while raising them up. Another thing that helped her to destress is exercising for 1 hour daily. Noha emphasized on deleting all of the negativity around her & to only focus on how to spread positivity.
The panel discussion ended by describing getting out of the comfort zone in one word.
Dina El Mofty - Excitement
Dina Aly - Gut Feeling
Noha Khater - Ambition