Mounira Jamjoom | Unscripted alumni journeys
When Mounira was younger, she knew she wanted to work in education. She thought teaching would be her way to make a positive impact on the Middle East, but she never expected to work in consulting. "Nonlinear careers are just part of life for most people," she says.
In Mounira's case, she started off as a teacher, then did her master's degree in curriculum development and got her PhD in education at the University of Oxford. And when her husband suggested consulting, she was intrigued – and then found her way to the Ideation Center at Strategy& ME, where she worked in a hybrid role for almost two years before moving on to the public sector and then launching her own organizations. She has also written two books, and she plans to write a third.
“I might write a novel," she says, "or a book about my journey.”
Today, Mounira is the co-founder and CEO of Emkan Education and Aanaab, an e-learning platform for educators that offers video lectures, reading materials, discussion boards, tasks and tests, online meetings, and more. The company recently raised more than $1 million in its first external funding round and partnered with the ministry of education in Saudi Arabia to help train more than 1,000 teachers on how to integrate technology into their classrooms.
According to Mounira, the path of entrepreneurship has been both fulfilling and challenging. She says it was especially hard to ask for help and to balance everything when she was a young mother. But now that her kids are 13 and 11, she thinks she made the right decisions and set a good model for them, while always striving to make a significant impact on education in the region.
“Now I'm very comfortable asking for help and leveraging my network," she says. "But that wasn't always the case when I was younger. It took me time to learn, so now I like to tell other people: Remember, you don't have to do everything on your own. There is no human being who does everything on their own anyway.”
Highlights from the discussion
Mounira Jamjoom on learning and growth
Mounira Jamjoom on career and motherhood
