A passionate advocate for female empowerment and enabling youths to meet the future with dynamic and diversified skills, Marwa Abbas leads IBM Egypt as its first-ever female General Manager
“I want all the women all over the world to really understand that being themselves is really part of their strength”
A passionate advocate for female empowerment and enabling youths to meet the future with dynamic and diversified skills, Marwa Abbas leads IBM Egypt as its first-ever female General Manager, using her extensive experience and technical skills to strengthen the company’s business growth and accelerate Egypt's digital transformation.
This interview is part of our Women in Business Today 2022 issue and video series. You can find the full video series on our Facebook and Instagram under @btegyptmag.
I personally believe we should celebrate women’s achievements not for a day, not for a month, but throughout the year!
Women play a vital role in society, with the many hats they wear, and their social, economic, cultural, and political achievements should always be recognized and appreciated.
We celebrate strong, resilient, and successful women, who have a wide impact on their nations. But most of all, we honor ordinary caring women who keep families together, provide for their children and care for their communities. We should always celebrate women's achievements, raise awareness against bias and unite to act for equality.
Attracting, retaining and developing female talent across the world is not only essential to IBM’s company culture, it’s a business imperative.
From 1899, when we hired our first female employees, to today; being the first woman to hold this position for IBM Egypt is something that I am proud of as it shows the company’s commitment to women’s empowerment and career advancement.
At IBM, we have focused deeply on providing strong support to women, with over 100 Women’s Business Resource Groups (BRGs) worldwide. We are committed to supporting employees in expanding their personal and professional networks, developing their skills, providing mentorship and sponsorship, and advocating for issues important to women at IBM.
In 2019, IBM launched the “Be Equal initiative” with the aim to engage IBMers, customers, and society at large in promoting the advancement of gender equality in business leadership.
We ended 2020 with women making up nearly 34% of the global IBM workforce. And, in 2020, 36% of IBM’s promotions worldwide were dedicated to females
Globally, across industries in the business world, women represent just 26% of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) workforce. In response, IBM created the annual Women Leaders in AI Program in 2019, to help increase diversity among the field and provide honorees a network for shared learnings. We are also proud to have showcased more than 100 women-led projects using IBM’s portfolio of AI solutions.
It’s necessary that women continue to feed their passion by developing their skills to reach the goals they set for themselves. But most importantly, this should be coupled by women believing in themselves and standing their grounds while communicating their ideas and visions.
I strongly urge women to always have the confidence to learn more and to get out of their comfort zone
Resilience, Confidence, and Adaptability.
Women are naturally resilient, and we've never seen a better example of this until the pandemic broke; each day we are bouncing back stronger than the day before. I urge all decision-makers to encourage and empower women in their organizations to grow as far in their skills and qualifications as they possibly can.
Be yourself, do not give up your dreams and always be the best.
