Shabana Ahmed is a Senior UX Designer and has spent over 10 years designing experiences and interfaces for International companies & startups. Her experience covers everything from finance to health tech and she’s presented and led UX workshops around the world.
Shabana’s passion for design and improving everyday experiences is so apparent in everything she does. She’s also written and illustrated a children’s book!
Key Lessons From This Episode:
⭐ How to evaluate if a job aligns with your values and the benefits of changing jobs frequently (5:02)
⭐ The growth that comes when we are brave and accept change (8:05)
⭐ How to keep going when things don't work out as you expect (10:36)
⭐ How Shabana approaches solving UX problems (19:07)
⭐ The lessons Shabana learned from Hajj (25:47)
🚀 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
Visit https://buff.ly/3PL2Nfo to learn more and sign up!
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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!
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.
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!
Show Notes and Transcript: https://www.tech-sisters.com/2023/01/alifya-kagalwalla/
Leave a Review: https://buff.ly/3o3ifG7
Patreon: patreon.com/techsisters
Today on Tech Sisters Stories we're excited to have Shaheen Sultana
Shaheen is a QA Analyst at Aventum Group. She loves to speak at various conferences and blogs to share knowledge and connect with more people in the community.
Show Notes and Transcript: https://www.tech-sisters.com/2022/12/shaheen-sultana
Leave a Review: https://buff.ly/3o3ifG7
Patreon: patreon.com/techsisters
Today on Tech Sisters Stories we're excited to have Zahraa Al Sahili.
Zahraa is a current PhD Student at Queen Mary University of London and Google DeepMind PhD Scholar. Zahraa is also an AI Session Lead a Udacity.
Show Notes and Transcript: https://www.tech-sisters.com/2022/12/zahraa-al-sahili/
Leave a Review: https://buff.ly/3o3ifG7
Patreon: patreon.com/techsisters
Today on Tech Sisters Stories we're excited to have Marwa Jawad
Marwa enjoys developing things that live on the internet. Her interest in web development started back in 2018 when she decided to try to make her ideas into real projects with HTML & CSS! Fast-forward to today, and Marwa had the privilege of working on a variety of real projects using the latest techniques
Show Notes and Transcript: https://www.tech-sisters.com/2022/12/marwa-jawad/
Leave a Review: https://buff.ly/3o3ifG7
Patreon: patreon.com/techsisters
Today on Tech Sisters Stories we're excited to have Fatma Elasouad
Fatma is a hardworking, motivated and knowledge-hungry developer; currently working as a cloud data engineer at BT. She’s also a co-founder of @Inclusive.Code a community that shares their experience as Early Career Developers, many of whom have made a career switch into Tech, in order to spread visibility and hopefully show others who have the same ambition that Tech needs their passion and unique perspective.
Fatma was also part of the winning team of the ShowCode Athena 2022 hackathon and was recently shortlisted as a finalist for both the Rising Star of the Year - Tech and the Role Model of the Year - Tech, for the Women in Tech Excellence Awards 2022
Show Notes and Transcript: https://www.tech-sisters.com/2022/12/fatma-elasouad/
Leave a Review: https://buff.ly/3o3ifG7
Patreon: patreon.com/techsisters
Today on Tech Sisters Stories we're excited to have Esraa Qandeel.
Esraa is a software engineer at Trilogy. She graduated from Al Azhar University and has a master's degree in computer software engineering from Arizona State University
Show Notes and Transcript: https://www.tech-sisters.com/2022/11/esraa-qandeel/
Leave a Review: https://buff.ly/3o3ifG7
Patreon: patreon.com/techsisters
Today on Tech Sisters Stories we're excited to have Shahed AlMashni
Shahed is currently a software engineer at Google working on Sovereign Cloud. Previously, Shahed has held internships at Amazon, Meta, and Google.
Show Notes and Transcript: https://www.tech-sisters.com/2022/11/shahed-almashni/
Leave a Review: https://buff.ly/3o3ifG7
Patreon: patreon.com/techsisters
Today on Tech Sisters Stories we're excited to have Hawa Camara
Hawa is a freelance Copywriter working with the Brandz Bee on the Tech Sisters rebranding project.
She loves to write personality-filled copy that goes right to the heart and boosts conversions.
Show Notes and Transcript: https://buff.ly/3dHbmbz
Leave a Review: https://buff.ly/3o3ifG7
Patreon: patreon.com/techsisters
Today on Tech Sisters Stories we’re excited to have Yulianna Frederika
Yulianna is a multi-faceted creative with expertise in graphic design, branding, social media & content creation across various industries who believes that thought-provoking content inspires actionable change.
She’s a social media manager at Rice Media and co-founder of Lepak Conversations which focuses on engaging social change-makers around issues concerning the Malay/Muslim community
Show Notes and Transcript: https://buff.ly/3AdVAOh
Leave a Review: https://buff.ly/3o3ifG7
Patreon: patreon.com/techsisters
Today on Tech Sisters Stories we're excited to have Sara Khan
Sara is a Program Manager at Amazon Web Services where she manages MAS2 and all of its services. She especially enjoys using data to convey meaningful stories about consumer patterns, behaviours and business operations
Key Lessons from this Episode
Show Notes and Transcript: https://buff.ly/3vCuFcr
Leave a Review: https://buff.ly/3o3ifG7
Patreon: patreon.com/techsisters
Today on Tech Sisters Stories we're excited to have Marium Abid
Marium is a senior technology consultant Digital Analyst at EY. She’s an active Tech Sisters member and was the recipient of last season’s scholarship from Product Guru.
Show Notes and Transcript: https://buff.ly/3zEZjUI
Leave a Review: https://buff.ly/3o3ifG7
Patreon: patreon.com/techsisters
