By Hanan Alnufaie
RIYADH — Cisco Saudi Arabia recently held its annual Women of Impact (WoI) conference which coincided with International Women’s Day. The conference, devoted to the professional development of women, hosted influential female role models who delivered and talked about their success stories, challenges, and lessons learned in their professional careers.
The Saudi version of the event took place in Al Nahda society in Riyadh. After the event, Saudi Gazette met Reema Al Harbi to talk more about the event, Saudi women›s contribution to society and more. Reema is the Country Transformation Project and Program Manager for Cisco Systems in Saudi Arabia. She is also involved with the country›s digitization acceleration plan, which was signed in partnership with Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud.
Before that, she was the Virtual Partner Account Manager with Cisco for three years. During that time, she was recognized for being the first Saudi woman to be awarded the “Senior Leadership Team Spirit Award” for emerging markets in 2014.
"I would like be story to be inspirational for other women to build that motive to move up the ranks," she said. She is also in charge of driving a number of internal projects as the internal operations lead, in addition to being involved in mentoring and developing Saudi youth through multiple public speaking platforms and direct engagements.
"The conference unites women from all over the world to help each other and to gain practical knowledge to advance their careers. Over the past 5 years, WoI has explored themes like “Be Extraordinary,” “Be Fearless”, “Be Unstoppable,” and this year is my favorite so far: “It’s Time. Collaborate. Lead. Inspire.” The event this year was a huge success, we had over 150 Saudi women attendees with AlNahda society kindly hosting the event and offering a bigger engagement platform» she said.
The event constituted three different panels, including technology, small and medium businesses, and health care. Female Saudi professionals, thought leaders and entrepreneurs discussed the obstacles they had faced throughout their careers and how they have been able to overcome them.
Reema believes that it is the right time for women to start working to be on the front seats since Kingdom›s Vision 2030 encourages women to illustrate their capabilities and support them to enter job market and drive greater participation in the economy, «A great part of Vision 2030 is dedicated to women empowerment. Women will play a major role in the development of the Kingdom in the coming years, and there is a goal for women to grow the country’s GDP from 40% to 65%. Women can also help in reducing the unemployment rate in Saudi Arabia from 11% to 7%. 50% of our population are women and 60% of our graduates are females, but only quarter if not less step into the labor market,» she said.
She insisted on the importance of viewing obstacles and failure as lessons learned to enrich our life and professional experiences. « We need to keep a positive attitude towards the things that try to stop us from reaching our goals, once we accomplish that, anything is possible Furthermore, I believe having the appetite to learn and excel at work is a key to cope with the daily challenges, « she added.
She stressed that her expectations for the future are very optimistic and positive. «An increasing number of women have achieved tremendous success across different sectors in the Kingdom including some of the most influential sectors such as: in telecom, banking and hospitality and also some governmental entities and ministries,» she said.
Furthermore, Reema believes that part of great leader is to distribute her knowledge, experience and the lessons she learned to others to become influential in her community. «True leadership comes from lessons learned. But in fact, true power lies in how we choose to deal with personal challenges and how we take action to overcome them. We are essentially required to eliminate negativity and ensure it does not inhibit our commitment to our goals,» she remarked.
Reema calls on women to speak their minds more, learn to enhance their communication skills, learn how to trust and have faith in our convictions and instincts and achieve whatever goals they set our minds to. «But it also takes more than that, it takes knowledge and involvement, and the determination to strive for more. And it takes an ability to see every situation as an opportunity for growth and progress, and a willingness to take advantage of those opportunities, to move forward,” she noted.
