Bio: Soraya Fouladi, CEO of Jara
Since she was a teenager, Soraya has designed her life so that she could gain the skills to one day, make Jara a reality. After attending the United Nations school to gain a global education, she went to university for electrical engineering to understand how to build what is now the Jara Unit, where she also designed and manufactured products from prosthetics to wearables. She gained experience in designing and implementing systems and programs through writing curriculum for K-12 robotics, directing the largest technology-education camp of 500 campers and 60 staff members at Stanford, creating a fundraiser for disaster relief called Jamming-for-Relief, and designing and implementing effective systems as Supervisor for an electrical engineering innovation laboratory. Soraya also was a business management consultant for a government technology commercialization organization that had 72 portfolio companies. Her technical capabilities, along with her leadership and management experience, paired with her commitment to Jara’s mission, ensures that Soraya and her team will see Jara to its maximum impact.
Her Quotables
- Listen to the Full Episode Here
- Visit Jara’s Website
BE LOUD AND UNAPOLOGETIC. CREATE A RUCKUS.
“As women, no matter how good our parenting is, no matter how good the teachers are, the media still teaches women that we shouldn’t be allowed, that we should be quiet, that we should just only be grateful that we shouldn’t be driven, that we shouldn’t shake this world up and turn systems upside down. You know, the media still teaches us that along with other systems in the world.”
“My advice is to be loud, create a ruckus, to turn this world upside down, to break the silence, to sometimes be the one standing alone in truth and injustice because that’s what it’s going to take for the world to shift. And one woman can change the world and that could be the woman seeing this right now. This could be you. So my biggest piece of advice is to be loud and unapologetic about it. Be very unapologetic about your truth.
STAND IN YOUR TRUTH – YOU ARE NOT ALONE
“It’s very hard for people who don’t grow up as a woman in this world to empathize with, the implicit biases that are deeply ingrained in society. And then it’s also really tough for people who don’t identify with gender. It’s tough also for them, but it’s up to all of us to break silence and to be loud and to stand in our truths.
“Yes, you’ll be standing. There’ll be times when often the only one, you’re the one standing up in the room stating your truth and it might feel like you’re alone in that, but you’re not alone. Period. There’s so many communities of people out there to support you and you know, it’s up to all of us to make those communities more available – those female communities, those communities of people who don’t identify with gender, and all of us standing together in unison and with the allies of men together – to join us so the world could shift more towards equity.”
WE NEED TO PUSH THE DOOR OPEN
“It takes those already familiar with the term equity to to take extra efforts to put more resources into women and minorities and people who don’t identify as gender so that we can get towards equity. It requires, us honoring the women who have sacrificed their lives so people like you and me can sit in a room of men and have a voice. It requires us honoring the people who today sacrificed so much. So again, we can stand in a room full of men and we can have a seat at the table for us, and it requires us today to be the ones to push this giant door open even more and sacrifice so much to empower those in the future so they don’t have to deal with so many biases and the unfair influence that we have to deal with every single day.”
CHOOSE LOVE IN THE FACE OF ADVERSITY
“So growing up, my mother, unfortunately, ended up having four different cancers five times, and she had all reasons in the world to not act out of love, but she does act out of kindness and love. So this was a lesson I learned every single day. There’s never been a moment where she hasn’t acted in love towards everyone on this planet. Even people she doesn’t know. So I took that and created this quote out of it:
“In the face of adversity is hardest thing, but the best thing is to choose love, choose love in the face of adversity, love for yourself, love for those you know, and don’t know and love for the world.”
Find out more about Soraya’s Company: http://www.joinjara.com/