Building Female Legacies with MakeReign and Ramiza Abdool.
Understanding how women can empower each other to build individual and collective female legacies in the workplace.
At MakeReign, learning and personal growth has always been one of our top priorities. Every Thursday, we host an in-house “Lunch & Learn” seminar, aimed at giving our team the opportunity to share and teach others something new. This helps encourage a constant atmosphere of learning and knowledge sharing within our company.
On Thursday 11 August, we were joined by human centric digital media strategist and futurist trend forecaster Ramiza Abdool, who took the opportunity to share some of her key insights around the role of women in the workplace, and how critical they are as key catalysts for progressive change.
Ramiza jumped into the game of digital media when she was around 20 years old. She started by “selling” web space which, at the time, was basically a static banner in a static digital environment. Her interest in the intelligence of technology, and her appetite for learning, led her into campaign management. This was her entry point into the fast-paced advertising industry. From here, Ramiza pivoted from advertising into the digital agency space, and found personal and professional growth, with a passion for people and a knack for leading them. Her growth thereafter as a powerhouse female leader can be attributed to her curious determination and courageous leaps of faith throughout her career.
“There’s a quote that says; ‘a shady zone is a comfortable place, but nothing ever grows there.’ I’ve taken that on with a headstrong and determined mindset.”
Starting out at such a young age, Ramiza faced various adversities that exist when you are fresh in the digital game. As a result, she applied herself to consistent learning, and consequently proved many nay-sayers wrong. Women are often perceived as the underdogs within organizations because their abilities are largely underestimated, which Ramiza believes is one of our greatest strengths. Her attitude of “if you tell me I can’t do it, I’m going to do it [anyway]” is what helped her cross over red tape and break through glass ceilings, leading her to where she is today; an influential female leader and innovator within the digital industry and inspiring many other women who followed in her footsteps to do the same.
Throughout her journey, Ramiza has come across a vast range of personalities and dynamics in the workplace both locally and internationally. She quickly identified that when you start climbing in the industry “there are layers, [that] it’s not clean cut, [and] each layer has politics and conditioning and different personalities’’ that undeniably require an acute eye to understand, and a resilient attitude to manage, in order to navigate the space, especially as a woman.
When asked during our live Q&A session how she got to the point of no longer dimming her light in the work environment, she shared that “[one] will never get to a point where you are completely ok with the way things work and how you are supposed to fit in. You simply get better at picking your battles through trial and error.” Ramiza believes that women are always perceived as a work in progress, and bearing this in mind only helpful in navigating the densely conditioned environment of the working world.
“You can be a masterpiece and a work in progress at the same time”.
What we started to understand from Ramiza is that, becoming almost “innately unshakeable” is the goal, achievable through introspection of oneself in the working environment, the roles one plays and the values one adds. Her top tip in this regard is to protect and nurture inner peace in a bustling work environment, which requires constant consideration towards the way one conducts, treats and speaks to oneself and those around you.
Ramiza strengthens her intuitive responses through meditation and “inner child work” (an ode to the concepts explored within the Play Therapy disciplines.) . She explains that as women, we may not always be able to control the external outcome but can control external responses through the way we show up, react to and manage adversity within working environments.
When it comes to the building blocks of a female legacy, we started to understand through Ramiza’s experiences, that an individual journey is the foundation of that [legacy] development. Ramiza succinctly highlighted that “you will come across people who are for you and who are against you,” however, regardless of the reality of that conditioning, it is our responsibility to lead by example and trust that the rest will follow suit.
“Stop walking around as the product of an algorithm, find your own unique voice.”
We exist in an era where the divide between reality and the virtual world is increasingly blurring. There’s a lot more to being truly impactful and creating actual change than just a PR drive for a business’ bottom line. Women’s Day is our reminder to be actionable and appreciative of the women whose legacies have allowed us to exist in contemporary society with the freedoms we have now, as well as acknowledge the adversities we still face as a collective (and encourage us to do something about them).
Reflection is a powerful tool for future change. As Ramiza so eloquently put it, “we owe it to [those women] who came before us — the words they spoke [and] the actions they took” that gave us a seat at the table. It is the legacy of those women that we need to appreciate, maintain and build on.
We feel that the best way to start building solid female legacies in the workplace is by encouraging women to use their voice, and understand their value. In instances where you see injustice occurring in the workplace, or stereotypes being perpetuated, it is everybody’s responsibility to stand up and speak up.
Ramiza represents a woman who knows where her strengths and weaknesses lie, a woman who is unafraid to “push some buttons and ruffle some feathers”, and a woman who is actively building on the female legacy that everyone in the industry benefits from, by building on herself and supporting those around her to do the same. This is what we strive for in our legacy.
MakeReign helps connect brands with consumers through digital interfaces. Combining research, data, user-centered design and testing with real customers, they create interfaces and experiences that reach millions — transforming business and delivering growth for their clients.
Website: www.makereign.com
Dribble: www.dribble.com/MakeReign
Instagram: www.instagram.com/makereign/
Twitter: www.twitter.com/MakeReign
