November 26th, 2016, Karachi, Pakistan: CIRCLE Pakistan, a leading platform for women’s entrepreneurship and economic empowerment in the country, hosted a storytelling-based public speaking workshop on November 17th, 2016, for local women leaders. This was the launch event for CIRCLE’s Young Professionals’ Network – a pioneering initiative for growing women leaders.
CIRCLE Pakistan, founded by Sadaffe Abid, former COO and CEO of Kashf Foundation, works towards women’s economic empowerment and employment through innovative entrepreneurship and leadership labs, advocacy campaigns and research. CIRCLE is based on the belief that investing in women is the smartest economic venture of today and that when women develop, communities prosper and economies grow.
The storytelling workshop was facilitated by Aurelie Salvaire. The trailblazer is a social entrepreneur and coach from Barcelona, who brings experience of curating multiple TEDx conferences and coaching TEDx speakers. Women from leading corporates such as IBM, L’Oreal, Mitsubishi, Unilever, National Foods as well as from start-ups attended the interactive workshop, which was held at Bank Alfalah Learning Centre. It involved practicing pitching their ideas, mapping their journey, and owning their narrative.
Sadaffe Abid, co-founder CIRCLE and former COO and CEO of Kashf Foundation shared, “Women are the most under-utilized asset of Pakistan. At CIRCLE, we are delighted to offer a series of public speaking workshops for them along with leadership labs so they can take leadership roles on boards, teams and as entrepreneurs. For Pakistan’s prosperity inclusion of women is critical.”
CIRCLE is celebrating Global Entrepreneurship Week by focusing on women entrepreneurship and the role women play in boosting business and innovation. CIRCLE has been highlighting one woman-led Start-up daily for #GEW2016 – this will be followed by the release of CIRCLE’s research on women entrepreneurship in Pakistan. Additional celebrations of Global Entrepreneurship Week included Fellows from CIRCLE’s Youth Fellowship visiting NETSOL technologies, hosted and mentored by Mr. Salim Ghauri.
As part of Global Entrepreneurship Week, CIRCLE also hosted a Twitter conversation titled ‘The Entrepreneur’s Journey: Opportunities and Challenges’ on November 19th, 2016. Individuals, incubators and Startups joined in by using the hashtags #GEW2016 and #CIRCLEWomen to crowdsource ideas and trigger discussion on the entrepreneurial landscape for women in Pakistan. The conversation can be accessed here: https://storify.com/CIRCLE2020/the-entrepreneur-s-journey-a-conversation
CIRCLE also targets women’s unemployment and underrepresentation through its Elevate campaign and framework. To date 15 CEOs have signed the #ElevatePak pledge, committing to women’s economic empowerment. Join the movement here: http://circlewomen.org/elevate-campaign/
For more information contact:
CIRCLE: Zaimal Azad, Operations and Innovation Manager. Email: z.azad@lse.ac.uk Ph: 0332 3799598
Social Media Details:
Twitter: @CIRCLE2020, Facebook: @Circlewomen
