Advocating for all women
Business leader Rania Anderson draws on her wealth of diverse experiences to show women new paths to success.
Rania Anderson
Global insights local empowerment
What is the most important lesson that you have learned in your work?
That what got you to this point won’t necessarily get you where you want to go next. Essentially, the strategies that work for us early in our careers are not the same ones that get us past mid- or senior management to the executive suite. You need different types of experiences in parts of the business that you’re in to make a difference. Don’t just stay in marketing or HR enablement functions.
How does your advice differ between established and emerging economies?
Western career advice doesn’t always apply. If you’re a woman in Saudi Arabia and you work for Aramco and you think you deserve a salary increase, you’re not going to walk into your boss’s office like you would in Europe. But hundreds of millions of women in these non-western markets have executive roles. What I like to do is to study how people are succeeding and how we can provide that information more broadly so that women know what they can do in their own countries.
What more can be done to encourage industry-wide changes?
It’s important to be an inclusive leader, to understand that the system isn’t really set up for everyone to succeed. And so how do you change the system? The way that you write job descriptions and performance reviews, the way you do assignments – all those things really matter and they will have a positive impact if they are done in a way that’s inclusive. That’s how we really can make a change.
Listen to our recent episode of The Bulletin with UBS for conversations with Ana Mahony and Rania Anderson:
