Shaima Abd Alghafoor – Founder and Commercial Head – Dukkan Alfreej – Kuwait
What motivated you to join the tech industry?
As a young child, I was always fascinated with devices and technology. My father wantedme to learn piano or go to ballet class, but I asked him for a gateway computer. I spent countless hours just playing on a computer that was not connected to the internet at the time.
Can you share with us what you do?
With my experience in the advertising and e-commerce sectors, I became an entrepreneur during the COVID-19 pandemic. A family restaurant business in Kuwait went bankrupt and I used this opportunity to step in and turn it into something that is viable. Through research, I recognized that the most successful businesses during COVID were food and groceries. So, I decided to open a specialty grocery store in Kuwait and build it with “digital” in mind, making everything technically enabled. I built an e-commerce website, which is tied into our inventory, which is disruptive in its own sense because larger supermarkets today don’t have an e-commerce that is tied to their inventory.
Can you share with us what you like best about your job?
Over the years, I moved around a lot. I initially worked at an ad agency which, at the time, was dabbling in something called “social media.” I spent a couple of years to understand what social media is and what advertising looks like. Eventually, I moved on to a media company and publisher which was Yahoo. After that, I moved into e-commerce with booking.com and over the course of the years, one thing I really loved about my journey and my job is the capability of moving into a variety of different industries. I was working with the best talent all over the world that somehow have a link to my growth and development across my journey. I don’t see my job, or my career, being fixated in one domain, in one industry. That is the great thing about having a role or job in technology – you can be quite flexible to move around.
Can you share one obstacle that you had to overcome to achieve a successful career?
Being a successful woman in the region in the early days, it was an interesting time where a lot of Head of Sales and department heads were always men. The reason men were hired in the early days is because there was the Watch Shaima’s interview here! misconception that men were better sales leaders, or better heads for departments, and they were the best figures to put in front of clients and the public. However, we have seen the region aggressively shift towards promoting women and female empowerment. I did spend a lot of time working with other women to push and instill the thoughts of empowering women in the region.
What is one piece of advice you would like to share with girls and women in technology?
Technologies is an industry that, from its early days, has been structured and built to empower and support women. It’s an industry that women should not shy out of in comparison to legacy industries. Many women have the misconception that it’s a domain that may not support them as mothers or support them as caregivers of their families, whereas in fact, you’d be surprised how many companies today do provide the platform to support their development and growth while being a great mom. Tech is such a broad term that it doesn’t do any justice. Many women might assume that working in tech requires them to code, to build products that when, in fact, there are other functions and operations within a tech company that any young girl who is interested in working in tech can fulfill. If you’re passionate about it, try it. You don’t have to code to work in tech.
