Your Name: Nermin Fawzi Saad

Business Name: Handasiyat.net, an online platform that provides engineering services

Type of Business: Engineering

Business Location: Amman, Jordan

Website http://www.handasiyat.net
Twitter @handasiyat

Facebook http://www.facebook.com/pages/Handasiyatnet/
Tumblr http://www.tumblr.com/blog/handasiyat

Reason for starting
I’ve started my business to find a way to help Arab Female Engineers to activate their certificates .. by working via a remote platform .. since Arab females are ruled by different kind of social rules which may cause many of them to quit their jobs or change it just to obey those rules. The nature of the engineering industry demands long hours of working outside home (in firms) with almost no flexibility. This makes it extremely difficult for Arab women who are often culturally obligated to take care of the family and home as well. Our business will have a strict employment policy to mainly hire women, offering them a chance to work freelance from home in order to balance their work and family lives. This opportunity will give them the ability to work independently, make use of their professional qualifications, and earn simultaneously, while balancing their other personal obligations.

How do you define success?
Success is to reach the farthest/highest possible point with all available tools in-hands. After graduating from the university -Mechanical Engineering Department – I traveled with my husband to Saudi Arabia, where women were not allowed to work in the engineering field at that time in year 2000. So I had to either change my career or stay at home. I chose to stay at home and started to help my husband, who is also a mechanical engineer, in his work remotely, and he started to assign tasks for me, and step by step people around him, who are also in the engineering field, started to outsource their tasks to me. I have participated in executing big projects, and have gotten many clients through the past 12-years. Now I’m very happy that I’ve used the tools around me – which is Internet – to achieve my dream of being an engineer, and would like to inspire other women in my community to do the same …

Biggest Success
My biggest success was when I got chosen as one of Cartier’s Women Initiatives Award finalists. I was chosen after less than one year of operating my company and get the exposure that people spend years to get. I’ve been nominated for other national and international competitions, which boost my self-confidence that I’m doing something special and something that can work, and I believe that I’m at the beginning of a successful road, and I intend to walk on it using all the available tools around me … to reach the farthest point on the road … Wish me Luck

What is your top challenge and how have you addressed it?
It is the Arab’s way of thinking towards Women’s capabilities, and I’m still struggling with that, and will beat it at some point, by the quality of work, and responsible relationships with clients.

Who is your most important role model?
It is my mother, who got her university degree while having 5-children, and had her job while people -at that time- thought that women should stay at home to cook, clean, …etc. She raised us well, and realized herself at the same time. We all graduated from universities thanks to God and to her.