In my first startup job, I didn’t ask financial questions until the 9/11 crisis, after heads began to roll. Given the massive cuts triggered by the COVID-19 crisis, many job-seekers need to quickly assess the job market, including job offers at startups. However, lack of regulations mean that the average…

Venture Scaling, VC and the “Beauty Pageant” Problem In the world of business, pitch competitions are to funding as stock options are to startups: they are seen as vehicles for amplifying merit. …

It’s time for Europeans to let go of stereotypes about who can build a business. — This past weekend, at the African Food Festival in Berlin, I reconnected with an Afro-German businessman and a German businesswoman who have, for the fifth year straight, run the event with hardly any formal funding. The woman (whose children tagged along for the festival) owns a specialist catering business.The man…

A Modern Romance? AI in the Age of Emancipation How Artificial Intelligence Hype Keeps Us Stuck in “The Good Old Days” Artificial Intelligence, or "AI" means different things to different people, but all definitions concern the way women and minorities relate to technology, and how those technologies adapt to us — or don’t. Our current relationship to AI is…

Over the past three years of training women at FrauenLoop to enter jobs in the tech industry, this question comes up again and again. Between my female mentors and students, I’ve heard the doubts and insecurities of women with high voices, of women with children, of women wearing headscarves, of…

Two years ago, I created the FrauenLoop program to address what I saw as a gap in existing social-tech initiatives in Berlin. With a background in Middle East history, and an almost 20-year career in IT, I was excited to use tech skill training as a way to help integrate…

Insights From Women Across the Technology Spectrum — “Hidden Figures” tells the story of women who toiled behind the scenes at NASA, enabling key scientific advances in the 1950’s and 60’s. …

As a woman of color who left Middle East black-market trade research for the world of eLearning in the mid-’90s, I’ve often found myself espousing the benefits of education, hard work, and adaptation — especially in the tech industry — to other recent immigrants in Germany. A year ago, I…

There’s a scene in the series ‘Mad Men’ where the ad team preps to pitch to Menken’s department store and a new face is brought forward. “I had to go all the way to the mail room to find him,” one of the team says. …