GirlCrush No. 2 - Umaimah Mendhro
Once in a while, a figure arises from the ashes and the choking dust of corporate America and makes you believe in the possibility, viability and plausibility of business for social good.
I know. I snorted in disbelief too. It's not so much that I'm cynical as it is that I've long since come to recognize (thanks to some really eye-opening lecturers and thinkers) the jargon, ideology and basic incapability of free market enterprises in practice - whether in its neoclassical origins or its current day neoliberal, post-industrial incarnation.
But there is something to be said for an individual who is able to harness the power in business enterprise, reigning in only those parts which have the potential for liberation and emancipation - in short, for good - while ripping away the mask of greed that business has become.
For those of us busy trying to navigate our day to day lives as women while creating and forging some kind of legacy that hopes to achieve some kind of good - not as a means to an end, but an end in itself - I give you Umaimah Mendhro.
Or, rather, Umaimah gives of herself to the world and demonstrates a committment to praxis - to theory and practice.
Graduate though she is from one of the world's foremost and competitive (read: cutthroat/keener) business schools, Umaimah breaks any preconceived notions one might have when trying to assemble a picture of the Class of 2009 in one's head. Amidst all the soon-to-be Wall Street executives, already-recruited accountants and prissy economists, Umaimah's unique idea for the world - and her place in it - set her miles apart from - and above - her cohort.
To onlookers and her proud family members, she might have been just another bright young professional with potential. But Umaimah's vision for a business ethic that breaks through profit and greed and actually serves to solve conflict rather than to perpetuate and rely upon it shaded her a just little brighter than the rest.
Umaimah's dream translated into dreamfly.org. Working on the template of ethical business, Umaimah took a handful memories of her home village of Akri, Pakistan and her "exile" in Makkhah, Saudi Arabia, erected upon a structure of business savvy and created a non-profit that works to build bridges and borders between communities in conflict.
Pertinent, especially considering the India-Pakistan divide and escalating tensions post the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Pertinent, considering that Muslims in India live out a strange divide: accepted and loved in private spheres and eyed conspicuously in public ones.
Though she serves as a consultant for Microsoft Corp, bringing communities in conflict together around common causes and on common ground is the way Umaimah lives her own words:
I want to live a life that compels people who do not seem to share a common thread to see if, at a raw human level, we really are that different. A life that gives people reason to reason for themselves... to pause and question the comfortable assumptions. To form and inform beliefs. And never give up common sense for common opinion.
via HBS
Her concerns are guilded in the earth she lives on and the essential human that she is. She dreams of being relevant and making her mark upon the world but doing so in a way that contributes to the dreams, the hopes and the improvement of the lives of others.
I really don't know what else is more inspiring and a thing of beauty to behold than a woman living the empire she builds.
Past being beautiful to the point of radiant and sharp to the point of cutting, Umaimah is compassionate and passionate to the point of being able to setup four simultaneous projects in each of India, Pakistan, Rwanda and Afghanistan.
Not dogged by dogmas, Umaimah is more than willing to humble herself and her opinion against aphorisms that she might have once held as absolute truth. Her musings on the "sorry" world leads her to question her basic business values and the forlorn look she casts upon the beliefs she formerly held true reminded me of the disillusioned child looking upon Shoeless Joe Jackson, pleading, "Say it ain't so, Joe".
Finding that so it is, however, Umaimah is filled with fire and it is and in a moment of praxis and reconciliation, she tries to work through what business has become in contrast to what it could be. Business, like Joe exiting the courthouse, does not respond but Umaimah is unwilling to take silence for an answer. Her legacy will no doubt create its own din, compensating for businesses' lack and perhaps even soliciting change.
And, perhaps, this is what the dream is - to be able to be an individual unafraid of shedding beliefs, of modifying truths, of being able to understand that pain is the legacy of humanity but violence doesn't have to be.