My name is Mona Demaidi and I wear many hats. One of them is in academia. So I'm the dean of the faculty of digital sciences at the Arab American University and the director of international relations. I'm also super active in the entrepreneurship sector because I fell in love with that since a long time. So I'm the chairwoman of Intersect Innovation Hub and I also lead my own tech consultancy company.

I think it started when I was 7 years old when I used to join my dad at the lab in Dundee. He was doing his PhD work and he had a huge uh device. It used to be called computer at the same at at that time and and they used one of the oldest programming languages then and I was very interested about that kind of device he's interacting with and it stayed in my head. So when we came back to Palestine, my dad brought us the first computer. I think I was in my seventh or eighth grade and like I fell in love with the whole idea of how I could interact with the device, how I could start using the tools and when I finished my high school I decided to go to the engineering department but I didn't want to be a computer engineer. I thought that I want to be a civil engineer even though I love computers because my dad was a civil engineer. So that was hardcoded in my brain. And after my first year at university, I took a programming course. And I think that when my whole life changed, I fell in love with coding and I decided that computer engineering is what I want.

Being a Palestinian who could actually contribute to the tech and entrepreneurship sectors in Palestine. And one of the main things that I was super proud to do as a young woman in Palestine is to actually develop one of the most important strategies which is the AI national strategy. I had the opportunity to lead the team out of 17 people from government, education, industry. At the beginning, honestly, I was like, could I make it? Am I equipped enough to do it? Do I have the knowledge? I never work with the government. Is it easy? Is it not easy? But you know what? I think after 1 month, I felt like I owned the whole show. It was much more me just having more confidence in what I know and having more confidence on what I could share with people, I could approach people. Another thing I'm proud of is how I'm seeing the younger generation now creating and developing change in tech and entrepreneurship. They're doing amazing. Mentorship is something that you have to have from your family if you from your friends from professional in the field. I mean a lot of the things that I did in my work and a lot of the milestones in my work I actually could I couldn't have achieved them without mentorship. I have people who I could call. I have people who I could ask very technically questions, professional questions, even personally questions sometimes in order to ensure that we as women could actually innovate in the workforce.

Another thing, knowledge is not enough when we are in the room. We have to start finding ways in which we could be part of decision making. So we have also to work on skills in which we could I'm not going to say impose ourselves but in which we could ensure that we hurt inside rooms. When I started my career, I was very shy person. I had all the technical knowledge. I was a nerd. That why they used to call me. But I was very shy to share my opinion. And in one of the trainings I received in the Netherlands, my trainer, she just approached me and said, "You know what, Ma, you have to start thinking of ma being a bigger ma who people could actually hear, listen to." And at that time I actually understand and realised that this is something that I have to start working on. Believe me, it's not an easy journey. Up to now I still work on a lot of things but it's really important to start working on that from a very young age.

My mom she's also an academic and me growing up and seeing her how she raised us and she works at home and outside home it shaped who I am as a person. It shaped who I am in terms of having empathy towards people. shaped who I am in terms of also helping others. So I'll say she she's my role model. I always understood the importance of empowering women from a very very very young age. So when I came back to Vistan 2016, I was introduced to a community called Araminent computing and they offered me an opportunity to have like a number of students going to attend the conference abroad. And what I did simply I just posted it on social media and I was amazed that I received no applications and it actually hit me very hard at that stage. My question was like why we're not participating? Why we're not part of the tech sector and the tech scene worldwide? and and what I did from there I decided that I'm going to be starting leading initiatives to empower women in technology.

So I started leading ILE E and with a focus on women in engineering. I started doing a lot of activities with the private sector mentorship. I even did the first conference for women engineering in Palestine in 2019 in which we had more than 200 students coming from all over the West Bank. One of the main things is that having women in leadership positions actually create an impact of having more women in leadership position. When I joined Intercept Innovation Hub, the first chairwoman, she was um a woman who's my mentor and then I became the SH woman later on. So we kind of created a culture in which we have women participating in leadership positions and that actually affected all of our programs at Interstate which focus on entrepreneurs.

So when we started the percentage of women participating in startup scene was was minimal. Now we're reaching more than 30%. And that shows you how when it's top down the change actually becomes um much stronger. Another story I would like to share is that when I started leading the AI national strategy, one of the main things because I'm a woman, one of the main things I focused on when we started working on the AI national team is to have high percentage of women participating. So we almost have 50% of the national team participating women. And not only that, we also ensure that within the strategy itself, we're tackling things like having more women studying AI, improving the percentage of women in the private sector working in AI, addressing gender equality as a concept within this strategy. So, so what I want want to say in other words is that having women could actually open doors for other women and we have to start working on strengthening the women networks in many industries and many aspects.