BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT & LEADERSHIP


I’ve always had an entrepreneurial streak, even as a child. When I was six years old, I decided to earn a little money by selling sunflower seeds to the neighborhood kids during my summer holidays. I roasted the seeds myself, scooped them into paper cones, and set up a shop on the street behind our house in Kurdistan. But no one wanted to buy them. “Girls can’t sell sunflower seeds,” a group of children informed me. I didn’t let this discourage me, however, and quickly came up with a solution: I made a male cousin sell the seeds for me in return for a share of the profits.

Pioneering spirit...

This same attitude has brought me to where I am today. In 2011, my life changed dramatically, when I returned to Sulaymaniyah for the first time since leaving fifteen years before. I was stunned to find that the city had changed beyond recognition. Entirely new neighborhoods had sprung up in the meantime, and what had previously been the outskirts of town were now part of the city center! But in some ways, it was as if time had stood still, as I found out when a childhood friend came up to me and said: “Shapol, I need a maternity bra!”

I remember thinking: okay, why not just buy one? But as it turned out, maternity bras were virtually impossible to come by in Iraq. That realization changed everything. I planned a return visit to Iraq, which I spent driving all around the Kurdistan Region, from Dohuk to Sulaymaniyah. After visiting countless shopping malls, I was forced to conclude that there simply weren’t any good bras for sale! In Kurdistan, lingerie is traditionally sold in shops owned by men. There are few sizes and no fitting rooms. Women buy bras without trying them on and either alter them or throw them away if they don’t fit well.

Overcoming social boundaries is the first and most challenging part for Iraqi women. Iraqi females have to face men from their families like the father, the brother or the husband and convince them of their ideas and their dreams. This causes them to have limited freedom to go outside of the house. Women find it hard to participate in training programs or courses because these programs are usually far away from home or at inappropriate times. This causes difficulty in networking and having private meetings with professionals and investors due to the social norms. Furthermore, lack of personal skills and not having enough time or motivation to grow them, the lack of knowledge in what necessary skills they need to grow their business, lack of advanced education and lack of technical and financial resources to help them with their businesses complicates their process of starting up their own business.

AEREAS OF EXPERTISE

Impressions of my business trips