Oral History Archive Farah Ahmed

In this interview, Farah Ahmed talks about her start-up “The Baby Garage,” her family, women in business and in the public sphere, and the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on her work in general.

Farah has 14-years’ experience in corporate life, as she started climbing up the corporate ladder when she was a first-year student at the university. She worked in different companies in the fields of development, advertising, and marketing. She even helped establish Think Digital Group’s franchise office in Egypt, before she dedicated all her time to her start-up “The Baby Garage” in March 2021, which was officially established in January 2020. Farah says that the idea began in 2015 and was only reliant on the efforts of volunteers back then. She also worked on the platform on a part-time basis only. The platform was dedicated to mothers helping each other without generating any profit. Later, Farah started an initiative called “Mompreneur,” which helped mothers work from home by encouraging them to buy baby products and resell them to other mothers on the platform. Farah says that this initiative supported more than a thousand mothers start their own business until now. Farah also developed the platform through content creation. She started publishing an online magazine that specializes in motherhood and childcare in Arabic, while citing reliable references and the advice of experts. This was all not-for-profit, until the platform was incubated by the Egyptian Ministry of Communications, when the platform won a competition called “Hiya Ra’eda” (She’s an Entrepreneur). Farah then began to expand her company and her team, which used to consist of volunteers only.

Farah says that what motivated her to start her initiative was her own experience being a mother. She believes mothers do not find much support as they go through the experiences of pregnancy and childcare. She believes motherhood is a beautiful experience, but it is difficult, as new mothers find themselves faced with huge responsibilities and may suffer from medical complications or mental health issues. Society does not try to anticipate such problems or help mothers through them, Farah says. Farah also highlights the fact that the platform does not only target mothers, but fathers too, since fathers need to play a more active role in the upbringing of their children and relieve mothers of some of their duties. She, however, says that 90% of the burden is still shouldered by mothers, thanks to the culture surrounding the experience of motherhood.

As for the challenges Farah faces in her work, she says that they are mostly personal and have to do with her being a mother and a woman, which leaves her with multiple responsibilities. She compares between the typical day of a mother and a father, highlighting the fact that men in Egyptian culture are not as involved as women in childcare. Thus, if a man and a woman are given the same task, the woman/mother would take longer than the man to accomplish it. As for other challenges pertaining to women and entrepreneurship, she highlighted a problem she encountered in women entrepreneurship support programs. She says that most of these programs encourage women to start their own companies, but do not say much on how to sustain them. She also says that most incubators invest in men, and that this has to do with global culture, not only Egyptian or Arab culture, as it is considered typical of men to be in leadership positions. Farah also sees a lot of stereotypes in corporate culture, as some companies prefer hiring men in certain positions and women in others. However, she says that she met women who broke those stereotypes, despite facing a lot of challenges in their work environments. She believes that in her field, women and men are hired equally, but when it comes to sales for instance, women are preferable, which is a stereotype Farah does not believe in. She does not see a difference between men and women in their professional performance, and says such differences have to do with different personalities and backgrounds, not gender. She criticizes companies that discriminate against women due to their marital status or the fact that they have children. She did not face much trouble being a woman in a leadership role but believes that some employees cannot tolerate the idea of having a woman manager or leader.

As for the novel coronavirus pandemic and its impact on Farah’s personal life and career, she said that she had problems with long-term planning because the situation was hazy at the beginning of the pandemic. However, she asserts that because her platform is an online platform, this was a huge privilege. Audience began to better interact with the platform and benefit from its services during the pandemic. However, this does not suggest there were no challenges. People may be enjoying the different services provided by “The Baby Garage,” but there needs to be a team on the ground for such services to exist. Even if she decided that her team would work in-office, other companies she has collaborations with may not make the same decision. Farah and her team are on a flexible work schedule, where they work from the office for three days and for two days, they work from home or from anywhere else.

As for Farah’s family, she says they were supportive of her from the beginning, when she was still an undergraduate student. They even supported her on her first business trip while she was a first-year student. When she decided to abandon her stable job and become a full-time entrepreneur, they only had some legitimate concerns, but they still supported her. Farah’s mother even accompanied her to the UAE for a year to take care of her newborn child while she took a job offer at Yahoo. Her husband was also supportive even of her trip to the UAE. She stressed the importance of self-actualization for both parties in a marriage as well as the importance of sharing responsibilities between husband and wife.

This interview tackled different aspects of Farah’s personal life and career, specifically her work at “The Baby Garage” and its current success, women, business, and gender, as well as her personal support network.