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.
Nour Maatouk Yabra
Product Design Group Manager, The Ksquare Group
Seattle, Washington, USA
What is your current role? Briefly describe in 1-2 sentences.
I lead the Product Design team, ensuring that all of our deliverables meet the standard of excellence that we set for ourselves, from a quality, budget, and time perspective. I also work to ensure the current and future success of my team by encouraging professional development, fostering a culture of collaboration, and support, helping resolve blockers, and maintaining constant communication with upper management.
What’s the best part of your job? What do you enjoy the most?
I love how we have been expanding our view of what our ultimate responsibility is as Product Designers. Through regular talks and debates, we have been growing our knowledge of key principles of design such as accessibility (a11y), inclusivity, and more. Armed with these new skills, we’ve been able to dramatically improve the impact of our work. It’s exhilarating to see how seemingly minor design aspects can have such a huge impact on some people’s experience based on their unique needs and expectations. It is very satisfying to know that, more and more, we are identifying those needs and designing accordingly, allowing people to have access to systems, products, and tools that they otherwise would not. There’s almost nothing better!
We’ve all faced personal and professional challenges these past two years - what motivates you to keep going?
Being a part of a team and organization that’s growing is so motivating. It feels like such a special time for us at The Ksquare Group – like we’re all in the foxhole together relying on each other to be our best. It’s incredible to look around (virtually at least) and see everybody giving their best, and knowing that I need to do the same. And knowing that we all play such an important role in empowering gets me out of bed in the morning fired up about the day ahead because I know that the decisions I make and the actions I take today have a direct impact on the success of the team and the entire organization.
What’s the best piece of advice you ever received?
I actually heard this piece of advice recently and it was so simple but so profound to me. It was this – make being genuinely happy for other people’s success become your superpower. At the end of the day, what’s underneath most of the things we all try to achieve is a desire to be noticed and valued. So, if we make it a mission of ours to look for the successes of others – great and small – and genuinely celebrate that success with them, we can literally change the world. Imagine if more people around us each day felt affirmed and valued instead of insecure and overlooked how meaningful that would be. And what I love about this advice is it helps me get my focus off myself and onto others, which is the place I want to live rent-free.
What does generosity mean to you?
I feel like to be generous is to give not from my excess, but from what I hold dear. It requires sacrifice. Related to the good advice I mentioned above, one area I’m working on being more generous with is my attention. With every year that passes, as I take on more responsibility in my career and personal life, there are more and more demands on my attention. So, I place a high value on my time and what I dedicate my attention to. And what I’m learning to do is be present and in the moment with whoever I’m with and give 100% of my focus to that person. It’s easy to get distracted and divide my attention, but giving everything I have to the person across from me is a beautiful picture of generosity, and something I’m actively working on to this day.
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?
So many of the challenges that the world faces today stem from a lack of empathy and understanding, even unintentionally. This applies to business and design as much as it does politics and economics. And as a Product Designer, I realize now just how big a role empathy plays in the solutions that we create. The first step of the Design Thinking process is to empathize, and since starting my design career, I’ve come to realize that without this first step, there can be no true innovation. Too often we create solutions that are looking for problems, and as a result, end up with a product or service that doesn’t really fulfill the users’ needs. Only by truly understanding users’ needs and pain points can we arrive at a solution that will help ease those frictions.
I saw this truth play out first-hand a couple of years ago when working with the Boy Scouts of America (BSA). I give a lot of credit to the BSA for realizing the importance of adapting their 110-year-old organization to better serve the youth of the 21st century. For example, at one point we were redesigning one of the core apps of the organization which was previously built purely for the parents and volunteers who ran the program to track and update the scouts’ advancement. Early on, however, we came to realize there was an opportunity to engage the scouts directly and give them the tools to stay motivated while working on their merit badges and awards. So we retired the old way for them to keep track of their advancement (paper and pencil) and designed a new mobile app from the ground up that better suited their needs and expectations.
If you could describe yourself in one word what would that be and why?
Work-in-progress. Okay, depending on your definition of a hyphenated word that may technically be 3 words, but who’s counting?
I think work-in-progress is a fitting word for this question because it says I’m on the journey to where I want to be and who I want to become, but I still have work to do to get there, and that’s okay.
I’m proud of who I am as a person, the relationships I’ve built, the lessons I’ve learned, the progress I’ve made in my career, and the things I’ve given back along the way. But at the same time, I’m excited and even impatient at times about the woman I still want to become, the things I want to accomplish, and the difference I want to make in the world.
What are you looking forward to this year? Are there any goals (personal or professional), activities, or experiences you are excited about?
On a personal level, after finishing my master's degree in Spain and living in Mexico for a few months, I'm getting ready to move to a new country and build a life there. That process is always an intoxicating one for me, and I can't wait to see what challenges and opportunities it brings.
But on the professional side, what excites me most is seeing the growth and development of my team. To continue learning new skills, developing our process, and creating products we can be truly proud of. But even more than that, knowing that I and most of my team are from Mexico means that this is an opportunity for us to show the world what we have to offer; to have our passion, creativity, and innovative spirit on display in a way it not often is. Pushing ourselves to become industry leaders here means not just advancing our careers, but becoming representatives of the country we all love, and it's an opportunity we do not intend to waste!
Words to live by:
Nothing is obvious and less is always more.
