Pledge 1%'s #WomenWhoLead series celebrates female leaders who are paving the way for the next generation. While our featured leaders come from a variety of backgrounds and industries, they are united in their efforts to promote equality for all women in the workplace. We’ve asked them to share a bit about their journey to success, as well as lessons they’ve learned along the way.
Mani Anand
Founder and CEO at Apphienz
San Diego, California, United States
What is your current role? Briefly describe in 1-2 sentences.
My role in the organization entails overlooking the entire business, engaging with clients, learning about their challenges, and troubleshooting their pain points, along with managing my global team. My team and I help companies and nonprofit organizations with their Salesforce instance and solve all Salesforce-related queries.
What’s the best part of your job? What do you enjoy the most?
The most cherished part of my job is interacting with my existing and potential clients. Solving their biggest, smallest and most significant problems stimulates me. I work solely for the joy of satisfaction that I get at the end of the day knowing that I’ve been able to make some difference in my client's business or a Nonprofit organization. Working with various nonprofits fuels my soul.
We’ve all faced personal and professional challenges these past two years - what motivates you to keep going?
The past two years have been nothing short of a tragedy for the entire world, the remnants of which will be witnessed by the upcoming generations. That said, what kept me going is my family, my work, my purpose which I strongly believe in, and my supporting group of close-knit friends. Moreover, being a small business owner myself, the amount of agility and resilience shown by small businesses during these times pushes me to keep going.
What’s the best piece of advice you ever received?
The best piece of advice I ever received is to focus on the positive qualities of people. They might be going through their fair share of struggles and challenges we never know about. The best we can do, not judge them in the first instance and focus on their negative qualities.
What does generosity mean to you?
To me, generosity is being sensitive to others' situations and helping them overcome hardships with my knowledge and skills.
How do you feel businesses can play a larger role in solving today’s biggest challenges? Do you have any specific stories or examples from your work or colleagues you can share?
There are a plethora of small and big challenges that are being faced by the world today anywhere from hunger to poverty, from lack of sanitation facilities to child marriages, etc. We tackle these one at a time if every business comes together and does its bit to make the world a better place. At our level, we have been working with several nonprofit organizations during the pandemic to help them raise funds for their organization. We take up projects to catch a fire or do pro bono projects to support some great nonprofits working to make our world a better place. We want to make sure we help as many organizations as we can.
We supported an LA-based Nonprofit on a Pro Bono basis which generated significant differences in their organization like streamlining the processes that helped them raise more funds and gave them 360-degree visibility of their data. This gave them more time to focus on doing what they do best, making the world a better place rather than focusing and worrying about the data.
If you could describe yourself in one word what would that be and why?
Passionate. Whatever I have done in my life so far has always been with the utmost amount of passion and devotion. Growing up, there have been many challenges like juggling between work and home. Taking care of two kids who were 1.5 years apart in age is a task in itself. It was only my passion to start my own company and to make this world a better place that keeps me thriving.
If you could pick a song to guide you through 2022, which song would it be?
Lights will guide you home - Coldplay
What are you looking forward to this year? Are there any goals (personal or professional), activities, or experiences you are excited about?
Professionally, there is a profusion of exciting projects in the pipeline that I am most excited about. Partnering with several nonprofits around the world. Personally, I'm looking forward to traveling with my family and spending quality time with them. Pandemic was a difficult time for all of us and we did not get a chance to travel so a nice getaway is something I'm really looking forward to.
