Easy Agile Podcast Ep.17 Defining a product manager: The idea of a shared brain

TL;DR

Henrik Kniberg, the agile coach behind Spotify's model, discusses how AI is fundamentally transforming software development. Key takeaways: AI tools like Cursor and Claude are enabling 10x productivity gains; teams should give developers access to paid AI tools and encourage experimentation; coding will largely disappear as a manual task within 3–4 years; teams will shrink to 2 people plus AI; sprints will become obsolete in favour of continuous delivery; product owners can now write code via AI, creating pull requests instead of user stories; the key is treating AI like a brilliant intern – when it fails, the problem is usually your prompt or code structure, not the AI. Bottom line: Learn to use AI now, or risk being left behind in a rapidly changing landscape.

Introduction

Artificial intelligence is fundamentally reshaping how software teams work, collaborate, and deliver value. But with this transformation comes questions: How do we maintain team morale when people fear being replaced? What happens to code quality when AI writes most of the code? Do traditional agile practices like sprints still make sense?

In this episode, I sit down with Henrik Kniberg to tackle these questions head-on. Henrik is uniquely positioned to guide us through this transition – he's the agile coach and entrepreneur who pioneered the famous Spotify model and helped transform how Lego approached agile development. Now, as co-founder of Abundly AI, he's at the forefront of helping teams integrate AI into their product development workflows.

This conversation goes deep into the practical realities of AI-powered development: from maintaining code review processes when productivity increases 10x, to ethical considerations around AI usage, to what cross-functional teams will look like in just a few years. Henrik doesn't just theorise – he shares real examples from his own team, where their CEO (a non-coder) regularly submits pull requests, and where features that once took a sprint can now be built during a 7-minute subway ride.

Whether you're a developer wondering if AI will replace you, a product owner looking to leverage these tools, or a leader trying to navigate this transformation, this episode offers concrete, actionable insights for thriving in the AI era.

About Our Guest

Henrik Kniberg is an agile coach, author, and entrepreneur whose work has shaped how thousands of organisations approach software development. He's best known for creating the Spotify model – the squad-based organisational structure that revolutionised how large tech companies scale agile practices. His work at Spotify and later at Lego helped demonstrate how agile methodologies could work at enterprise scale whilst maintaining team autonomy and innovation.

Henrik's educational videos have become legendary in the agile community. His "Agile Product Ownership in a Nutshell" video, created over a decade ago, remains one of the most-watched and shared resources for understanding product ownership, with millions of views. His ability to distil complex concepts into simple, visual explanations has made him one of the most accessible voices in agile education.

More recently, Henrik has turned his attention to the intersection of AI and product development. As co-founder of Abundly AI, he's moved from teaching about agile transformation to leading AI transformation – helping companies and teams understand how to effectively integrate generative AI tools into their development workflows. His approach combines his deep understanding of team dynamics and agile principles with hands-on experience using cutting-edge AI tools like Claude, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot.

Henrik codes daily using AI and has been doing so for over two and a half years, giving him practical, lived experience with these tools that goes beyond theoretical understanding. He creates educational content about AI, trains teams on effective AI usage, and consults with organisations navigating their own AI transformations. His perspective is particularly valuable because he views AI through the lens of organisational change management – recognising that successful AI adoption isn't just about the technology, it's about people, culture, and process.

Based in Stockholm, Sweden, Henrik continues to push the boundaries of what's possible when human creativity and AI capabilities combine, whilst maintaining a pragmatic, human-centred approach to technological change.

Transcript

Note: This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and readability.

Maintaining Team Morale and Motivation in the AI Era

Tenille Hoppo: Hi there, team, and welcome to this new episode of the Easy Agile Podcast. My name is Tenille Hoppo, and I'm feeling really quite lucky to have an opportunity to chat today with our guest, Henrik Kniberg.

Henrik is an agile coach, author, and entrepreneur known for pioneering agile practices at companies like Spotify and Lego, and more recently for his thought leadership in applying AI to product development. Henrik co-founded Abundly AI, and when he isn't making excellent videos to help us all understand AI, he is focused on the practical application of generative AI in product development and training teams to use these technologies effectively.

Drawing on his extensive experience in agile methodologies and team coaching, Henrik seems the perfect person to learn from when thinking about the intersection of AI, product development, and effective team dynamics. So a very warm welcome to you, Henrik.

Henrik Kniberg: Thank you very much. It's good to be here.

Tenille: I think most people would agree that motivated people do better work. So I'd like to start today by touching on the very human element of this discussion and helping people maintain momentum and motivation when they may be feeling some concern or uncertainty about the upheaval that AI might represent for them in their role.

What would you suggest that leaders do to encourage the use of AI in ways that increase team morale and creativity rather than risking people feeling quite concerned or even potentially replaced?

Henrik: There are kind of two sides to the coin. There's one side that says, "Oh, AI is gonna take my job, and I'm gonna get fired." And the other side says, "Oh, AI is going to give me superpowers and give us all superpowers, and thereby give us better job security than we had before."

I think it's important to press on the second point from a leader's perspective. Pitch it as this is a tool, and we are entering a world where this tool is a crucial tool to understand how to use – in a similar way that everyone uses the Internet. We consider it obvious that you need to know how to use the Internet. If you don't know how to use the Internet, it's going to be hard.

"I encourage people to experiment, give them access to the tools to do so, and encourage sharing. And don't start firing people because they get productive."

I also find that people tend to get a little bit less scared once they learn to use it. It becomes less scary. It's like if you're worried there's a monster under your bed, maybe look under your bed and turn on the lights. Maybe there wasn't a monster there, or maybe it was there but it was kind of cute and just wanted a hug.

Creating a Culture of Safe Experimentation

Tenille: I've read that you encourage experimentation with AI through learning – I agree it's the best way to learn. What would you encourage leaders and team leaders to do to create a strong culture where teams feel safe to experiment?

Henrik: There are some things. One is pretty basic: just give people access to good AI tools. And that's quite hard in some large organisations because there are all kinds of resistance – compliance issues, data security issues. Are we allowed to use ChatGPT or Claude? Where is our data going? There are all these scary things that make companies either hesitate or outright try to stop people.

Start at that hygiene level. Address those impediments and solve them. When the Internet came, it was really scary to connect your computer to the Internet. But now we all do it, and you kind of have to, or you don't get any work done. We're at this similar moment now.

"Ironically, when companies are too strict about restricting people, then what people tend to do is just use shadow AI – they use it on their own in private or in secret, and then you have no control at all."

Start there. Once people have access to really good AI tools, then it's just a matter of encouraging and creating forums. Encourage people to experiment, create knowledge-sharing forums, share your own experiments. Try to role-model this yourself. Say, "I tried using AI for these different things, and here's what I learned." Also provide paths for support, like training courses.

The Right Mindset for Working with AI

Tenille: What would you encourage in team members as far as their mindset or skills go? Certainly a nature of curiosity and a willingness to learn and experiment. Is there anything beyond that that you think would be really key?

Henrik: It is a bit of a weird technology that's never really existed before. We're used to humans and code. Humans are intelligent and kind of unpredictable. We hallucinate sometimes, but we can do amazing things. Code is dumb – it executes exactly what you told it to do, and it does so every time exactly the same way. But it can't reason, it can't think.

Now we have AI and AI agents which are somewhere in the middle. They're not quite as predictable as code, but they're a lot more predictable than humans typically. They're a lot smarter than code, but maybe not quite as smart as humans – except for some tasks when they're a million times smarter than humans. So it's weird.

You need a kind of humble attitude where you come at it with a mindset of curiosity. Part of it is also to realise that a lot of the limitation is in you as a user. If you try to use AI for coding and it wrote something that didn't work, it's probably not the model itself. It's probably your skills or lack of skills because you have to learn how to use these tools. You need to have this attitude of "Oh, it failed. What can I do differently next time?" until you really learn how to use it.

"There can be some aspect of pride with developers. Like, 'I've been coding for 30 years. Of course this machine can't code better than me.' But if you think of it like 'I want this thing to be good, I want to bring out the best in this tool' – not because it's going to replace me, but because it's going to save me a tonne of time by doing all the boring parts of the coding so I can do the more interesting parts – that kind of mindset really helps."

Maintaining Code Quality and Shared Understanding

Tenille: Our team at Easy Agile is taking our steps and trying to figure out how AI is gonna work best for us. I put the question out to some of our teams, and there were various questions around people taking their first steps in using AI as a co-pilot and producing code. There are question marks around consistency of code, maintaining code quality and clean architecture, and even things like maintaining that shared understanding of the code base. What advice do you have for people in that situation?

Henrik: My first piece of advice when it comes to coding – and this is something I do every day with AI, I've been doing for about two and a half years now – is that the models now, especially Claude, have gotten to the level where it's basically never the AI's fault anymore. If it does anything wrong, it's on you.

You need to think about: okay, am I using the wrong tool maybe? Or am I not using the tool correctly?

For example, the current market leader in terms of productivity tools with AI is Cursor. There are other tools that are getting close like GitHub Copilot, but Cursor is way ahead of anything else I've seen. With Cursor, it basically digs through your code base and looks for what it needs.

But if it fails to find what it needs, you need to think about why. It probably failed for the same reason a human might have failed. Maybe your code structure was very unstructured. Maybe you need to explain to the AI what the high-level structure of your code is.

"Think of it kind of like a really smart intern who just joined your team. They're brilliant at coding, but now they got confused about something, and it's probably your code – something in it that made it confused. And now you need to clarify that."

There are ways to do that. In Cursor, for example, you can create something called cursor rules, which are like standing documents that describe certain aspects of your system. In my team, we're always tweaking those rules. Whenever we find that the AI model did something wrong, we're always analysing why. Usually it's our prompt – I just phrased it badly – or I just need to add a cursor rule, or I need to break the problem down a little bit.

It's exactly the same thing as if you go to a team and give them this massive user story that includes all these assumptions – they'll probably get some things wrong. But if you take that big problem and sit down together and analyse it and split it into smaller steps where each step is verifiable and testable, now your team can do really good work. It's exactly the same thing with AI.

Addressing the Code Review Bottleneck

Tenille: One of our senior developers found that he was outputting code at a much greater volume and faster speed, but the handbrake he found was actually their code review processes. They were keeping the same processes they had previously, and that was a bit of a handbrake for them. What kind of advice would you have there?

Henrik: This reminds me of the general issue with any kind of productivity improvement. If you have a value stream, a process where you do different parts – you do some development, some testing, you have some design – whenever you take one part of the process and make it super optimised, the bottleneck moves to somewhere else.

If testing is no longer the bottleneck, maybe coding is. And when coding is instant, then maybe customer feedback – or lack of customer feedback – is the bottleneck. The bottleneck just keeps moving. In that particular case, the bottleneck became code review. So I would just start optimising that. That's not an AI problem. It's a process problem.

Look at it: what exactly are we trying to do when we review? Maybe we could think about changing the way we review things. For example, does all code need to be reviewed? Would it be enough that the human who wrote it and the AI, together with the human, agree that this is fine? Or maybe depending on the criticality of that change, in some cases you might just let it pass or use AI to help in the reviewing process also.

"I think there's value in code review in terms of knowledge sharing in a large organisation. But maybe the review doesn't necessarily need to be a blocking process either. It could be something you go back and look at – don't let it stop you from shipping, but maybe go back once per week and say, 'Let's look at some highlights of some changes we've made.'"

We produce 10 times more code than in the past, so reviewing every line is not feasible. But maybe we can at least identify which code is most interesting to look at.

Ethical Considerations: Balancing Innovation with Responsibility

Tenille: Agile emphasises people over process and delivering value to customers. Now with AI in the mix, there's potential for raising some ethical considerations. I'm interested in your thoughts on how teams should approach these ethical considerations that come along with AI – things like balancing rapid experimentation against concerns around bias, potential data privacy concerns.

Henrik: I would treat each ethical question on its own merits. Let me give you an example. When you use AI – let's say facial recognition technology that can process and recognise faces a lot better than any human – I kind of put that in the bucket of: any tool that is really useful can also be used for bad things. A hammer, fire, electricity.

That doesn't have so much to do with the tool itself. It has much more to do with the rules and regulations and processes around the tool. I can't really separate AI in that sense. Treat it like any other system. Whenever you install a camera somewhere, with or without AI, that camera is going to see stuff. What are you allowed to do with that information? That's an important question. But I don't think it's different for AI really, in that sense, other than that AI is extremely powerful. So you need to really take that seriously, especially when it comes to things like autonomous weapons and the risk of fraud and fake news.

"An important part of it is just to make it part of the agenda. Let's say you're a recruitment company and you're now going to add some AI help in screening. At least raise the question: we could do this. Do we want to do this? What is the responsible way to do it?"

It's not that hard to come up with reasonable guidelines. Obviously, we shouldn't let the AI decide who we're going to hire or not. That's a bad idea. But maybe it can look at the pile of candidates that we plan to reject and identify some that we should take a second look at. There's nothing to lose from that because that AI did some extra research and found that this person who had a pretty weak CV actually has done amazing things before.

We're actually working with a company now where we're helping them build some AI agents. Our AI agents help them classify CVs – not by "should we hire them or not," but more like which region in Sweden is this, which type of job are we talking about here. Just classifying to make it more likely that this job application reaches the right person. That's work that humans did before with pretty bad accuracy.

The conclusion was that AI, despite having biases like we humans do, seemed to have less biases than the human. Mainly things like it's never going to be in a bad mood because it hasn't had its coffee today. It'll process everybody on the same merits.

I think of it like a peer-to-peer thing. Imagine going to a doctor – ideally, I want to have both a human doctor and an AI doctor side by side, just because they both have biases, but now they can complement each other. It's like having a second opinion. If the AI says we should do this and the doctor says, "No, wait a second," or vice versa, having those two different opinions is super useful.

Parallels Between Agile and AI Transformations

Tenille: You're recognised as one of the leading voices in agile software development. I can see, and I'm interested if you do see, some parallels between the agile transformations that you led at Spotify and Lego with the AI transformations that many businesses are looking at now.

Henrik: I agree. I find that when we help companies transition towards becoming AI native, a lot of the thinking is similar to agile. But I think we can generalise that agile transformations are not really very special either – it's organisational change.

There are some patterns involved regardless of whether you're transitioning towards an agile way of working or towards AI. Some general patterns such as: you've got to get buy-in, it's useful to do the change in an incremental way, balance bottom-up with top-down. There are all these techniques that are useful regardless. But as an agilist, if you have some skills and competence in leading and supporting a change process, then that's going to be really useful also when helping companies understand how to use AI.

Tenille: Are you seeing more top-down or bottom-up when it comes to AI transformations?

Henrik: So far it's quite new still. The jury's not in yet. But so far it looks very familiar to me. I'm seeing both. I'm seeing situations where it's pure top-down where managers are like "we got to go full-out AI," and they push it out with mixed results. And sometimes just completely bottom-up, also with mixed results.

Sometimes something can start completely organically and then totally take hold, or it starts organically and then gets squashed because there was no buy-in higher up. I saw all of that with agile as well. My guess is in most cases the most successful will be when you have a bit of both – support and guidance from the top, but maybe driven from the bottom.

"I think the bottom-up is maybe more important than ever because this technology is so weird and so fast-moving. As a leader, you don't really have a chance if you try to control it – you're going to slow things down to an unacceptable level. People will be learning things that you can't keep up with yourself. So it's better to just enable people to experiment a lot, but then of course provide guidance."

AI for Product Owners: From Ideation to Pull Requests

Tenille: You're very well known for your guidance and for your ability to explain quite complex concepts very simply and clearly. I was looking at your video on YouTube today, the Agile Product Ownership in a Nutshell video, which was uploaded about 12 years ago now. Thinking about product owners, there's a big opportunity now with AI for generating ideas, analysing data, and even suggesting new features. What's your advice for product owners and product managers in using AI most effectively?

Henrik: Use it for everything. Overuse it so you can find the limits. The second thing is: make sure you have access to a good AI model. Don't use the free ones. The difference is really large – like 10x, 100x difference – just in paying like $20 per month or something. At the moment, I can particularly strongly recommend Claude. It's in its own category of awesomeness right now. But that of course changes as they leapfrog each other. But mainly: pay up, use a paid model, and then experiment.

For product owners, typical things are what you already mentioned – ideation, creating good backlog items, splitting a story – but also writing code. I would say as a PO, there is this traditional view, for example in Scrum, that POs should not be coding. There's a reason for that: because coding takes time, and then as PO you get stuck in details and you lose the big picture.

Well, that's not true anymore. There are very many things that used to be time-consuming coding that is basically a five-minute job with a good prompt.

"Instead of wasting the team's time by trying to phrase that as a story, just phrase it as a pull request instead and go to the team and demonstrate your running feature."

That happened actually today. Just now, our CEO, who's not a coder, came to me with a pull request. In fact, quite often he just pushes directly to a branch because it's small changes. He wants to add some new visualisation for a graph or something in our platform – typically admin stuff that users won't see, so it's quite harmless if he gets it wrong.

He's vibe coding, just making little changes to the admin, which means he never goes to my team and says, "Hey, can you guys generate this report or this graph for how users use our product?" No, he just puts it in himself if it's simple.

Today we wanted to make a change with how we handle payments for enterprise customers. Getting that wrong is a little more serious, and the change wasn't that hard, but he just didn't feel completely comfortable pushing it himself. So he just made a PR instead, and then we spent 15 minutes reviewing it. I said it was fine, so we pushed it.

It's so refreshing that now anybody can code. You just need to learn the basic prompting and these tools. And then that saves time for the developers to do the more heavyweight coding.

Tenille: It's an interesting world where we can have things set up where anyone could just jump in and with the right guardrails create something. It makes Friday demos quite probably a lot more interesting than maybe they used to be in the past.

Henrik: I would like to challenge any development team to let their stakeholders push code, and then find out whatever's stopping you from doing that and fix that. Then you get to a very interesting space.

Closing the Gap Between Makers and Users

Tenille: A key insight from your work with agile teams in the past has been to really focus on minimising that gap between maker and user. Do you think that AI helps to close that gap, or do you think it potentially risks widening it if teams are focusing too much on AI predictions and stop talking to their customers effectively?

Henrik: I think that of course depends a lot on the team. But from what I've seen so far, it massively reduces the gap. Because if I don't have to spend a week getting a feature to work, I can spend an hour instead. Then I have so much more time to talk to my users and my customers.

If the time to make a clickable prototype or something is a few seconds, then I can do it live in real time with my customers, and we can co-create. There are all these opportunities.

I find that – myself, my teams, and the people I work with – we work a lot more closely with our users and customers because of this fast turnaround time.

"Just yesterday I was teaching a course, and I was going home sitting on the subway. It was a 15-minute subway ride. I finally got a seat, so I had only 7 minutes left. There's this feature that I wanted to build that involved both front-end and back-end and a database schema change. Well, 5 minutes later it was done and I got off the subway and just pushed it. That's crazy."

Of course, our system is set up optimised to enable it to be that fast. And of course not everything will work that well. But every time it does, I've been coding for 30 years, and I feel like I wake up in some weird fantasy every day, wondering, "Can I really be this productive?" I never would have thought that was possible.

Looking Ahead: The Future of Agile Teams

Tenille: I'd like you to put your futurist hat on for a moment. How do you see the future of agile teamwork in, say, 10 to 15 years time? If we would have this conversation again in 2035, given the exponential growth of AI and improvements over the last two to three years, what do you think would be the biggest change for software development teams in how they operate?

Henrik: I can't even imagine 10 years. Even 5 years is just beyond imagination. That's like asking someone in the 1920s to imagine smartphones and the Internet. I think that's the level of change we're looking at.

I would shorten the time a little bit and say maybe 3 or 4 years. My guess there – and I'm already seeing this transfer happen – is that coding will just go away. It just won't be stuff that we humans do because we're too slow and we hallucinate way too much.

But I think engineering and the developer role will still be there, just that we don't type lines of code – in the same way that we no longer make punch cards or we no longer write machine code and poke values into registers using assembly language. That used to be a big part of it, but no longer.

"In the future, as developers, a lot of the work will still be the same. You're still designing stuff, you're thinking about architecture, you're interacting with customers, and you're doing all the other stuff. But typing lines of code is something that we're gonna be telling our kids about, and they're not gonna believe that we used to do that."

The other thing is smaller teams, which I'm already seeing now. I think the idea of a cross-functional team of 5 to 7 people – traditionally that was considered quite necessary in order to have all the different skills needed to deliver a feature in a product. But that's not the case anymore. If you skip ahead 2 or 3 years when this knowledge has spread, I think most teams will be 2 people and an AI, because then you have all the domain knowledge you need, probably.

As a consequence of that, we'll just have more teams. More and smaller teams. Of course, then you need to collaborate between the teams, so cross-team synchronisation is still going to be an issue.

Also, I'm already seeing this now, but this concept of sprints – the whole point is to give a team some peace of mind to build something complex, because typically you would need a week or two to build something complex. But now, when it takes a day and some good prompting to do the same thing that would have taken a whole sprint, then the sprint is a day instead. If the sprint is a day, is there any difference between a sprint planning meeting and a daily standup? Not really.

I think sprints will just kind of shrink into oblivion. What's going to be left instead is something a little bit similar – some kind of synchronisation point or follow-up point. Instead of a sprint where every 2 weeks we sit down and try to make a plan, I think it'll be very much continuous delivery on a day-to-day basis. But then maybe every week or two we take a step back and just reflect a little bit and say, "Okay, what have we been delivering the past couple of weeks? What have we been learning? What's our high-level focus for the next couple of weeks?" A very, very lightweight equivalent of a sprint.

I feel pretty confident about that guess because personally, we are already there with my team, and I think it'll become a bit of a norm.

Final Thoughts: Preparing for the Future

Henrik: No one knows what's gonna happen in the future, and those who say they do are kidding themselves. But there's one fairly safe bet though: no matter what happens in the future with AI, if you understand how to use it, you'll be in a better position to deal with whatever that is. That's why I encourage people to get comfortable with it, get used to using it.

Tenille: I have a teenage daughter who I'm actually trying to encourage to learn how to use AI, because I feel like when I was her age, the Internet was the thing that was sort of coming mainstream. It completely changed the way we live. Everything is online now. And I feel like AI is that piece for her.

Henrik: Isn't it weird that the generation of small children growing up now are going to consider this to be normal and obvious? They'll be the AI natives. They'll be like, "Of course I have my AI agent buddy. There's nothing weird about that at all."

Tenille: I'll still keep being nice to my coffee machine.

Henrik: Yeah, that's good. Just in case, you know.

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Thank you to Henrik Kniberg for joining us on this episode of the Easy Agile Podcast. To learn more about Henrik's work, visit Abundly AI or check out his educational videos on AI and agile practices.

Subscribe to the Easy Agile Podcast on your favourite platform, and join us for more conversations about agile, product development, and the future of work.

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Transcript

Caitlin Mackie:

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Easy Agile Podcast for 2021. Each episode, we talk with some of the most interesting people in tech, in agile, and in leading businesses around the world to share fresh perspectives and learn from the wealth of knowledge each guest has to share. I'm Caitlin and I'm the Graduate Marketing Coordinator at Easy Agile and your host for this episode. We are thrilled to be back and have some amazing guests lined up this season. So to kick us off, I'm really excited to be talking with Sarah Hajipour.

Caitlin Mackie:

Sarah has so much rich and diverse experience in the agile space. She's an agile coach, a business transformation leader, a project and program manager, and more recently a podcast host and author. She's the jack of all trades and has been in the business agility space for over 10 years. In this episode, Sarah and I chat about the significance of goal setting and in particular goal setting in unpredictable times. We chat about her most recent projects, the Agility Podcast with Sarah Hajipour and her book on Agile Case Studies.

Caitlin Mackie:

And of course with International Women's Day coming up, Sarah shared some amazing advice and her thoughts on the way forward for women in agile. She highlighted the importance of raising your hand and asking for help when you need it, as well as embracing qualities that aren't always traditionally thought of in leaders. It was such a thoughtful and insightful discussion. I got a lot of value out of our conversation and received some great advice, and I'm really looking forward to putting into practice. I know those listening will feel the same. Let's jump in.

Caitlin Mackie:

Sarah, thank you so much for joining us and spending some time with me today.

Sarah Hajipour:

Sure. Thanks for having me.

Caitlin Mackie:

So being our first guest for the year, I wanted to ask you about any new year's resolutions. Are you on track? Are you a believer in them or do you have a different type of goal setting process?

Sarah Hajipour:

That's a great question because we discussed this with a couple of friends and we realized new year's resolution is always going to be some kind of like a huge goal that we don't know if we're going to meet it or not. And thinking agile business agility and as an agile coach, I believe in the fact that let's have smaller goals and review them every three months, every six months and see where we at. Instead of looking into huge goals that we don't know what's going to happen because there's always a lot of uncertainties, even in our personal lives regarding the goals that we set up for ourselves. So yeah, that's how I look at it. Quarterly, quarterly personal goals. Let's say that.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Yeah, I think if the last year has taught us anything, I think we can all agree how unpredictable things can become. So those original goals.

Sarah Hajipour:

That's true.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah. The original goals might have to take a couple of detours. So what would be your advice for setting career goals in uncertain times?

Sarah Hajipour:

That's a great question. For career goals I believe it really matters that you do something that you're interested in at least. If you still haven't found your passion, that's fine especially people like young professionals. It's okay if you haven't found your passion yet, but you can still follow a basically career path starting with things that you like to do, kind of you enjoy and you learn through the way.

Sarah Hajipour:

I was listening to one of the fashion icons on YouTube a couple of days ago and the interviewer was asking her, "What was your career path? How did you get to this place you are now?" And I loved what she told everybody, the students, and that was go and find a career, find a job and learn. You first need to learn a lot of skills before you decide what you're actually good at. You decide, you understand what's your weaknesses and your strengths, right? Because not all of us have these amazing ideas all the time and that's fine.

Sarah Hajipour:

I'm not very much pro-everybody has to be a visionary and everybody has to have like big, shiny goals and ideas. I think that's perfectly fine to just find the kind of job that or the kind of career path that you're comfortable with and then sometimes get out of your comfort zone and then discover as you go. Life is to explore, not to just push yourself on the corner all the time and just compare yourself with everybody else.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah. I love that. That's great advice. So you've recently added podcast host and author to your resume. Were they always career goals of yours?

Sarah Hajipour:

No, absolutely not. Well, I'm a little bit of an introverted person. So kind of sit in front of a camera even talking and having people hear me was always like, "Oh my God, I know I need to talk about this even with my teams and stuff," but I will do it only if it's necessary. What got me into podcasting was that I figured there's a lot of questions that I'm finding answers when I'm having conversations and meetups and in different groups, professional groups that I'm in. And I wanted other people to hear those as well. I talked to people who have great insights and have been way longer than me in the career. So I'm learning at the same time. And I wanted to share that learning with everybody else. That's the reason I'm doing the podcast.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah, that's great. Yeah, I love that. And I think you kind of touched on this earlier, but I think being in the agile space, sometimes it can be a nice reminder for you to have a bit of a focus, but then reflect and understand sort of where to be more effective and adjust accordingly. I know you mentioned that with your career goals, do you think that those agile principles can be applied beyond the usual use case?

Sarah Hajipour:

I do. I believe that it's a very intuitive like agile is a very intuitive way of working and a way of thinking. That's why now it's expanded to other industries. They didn't stay with DevOps and IT and development. It is now a lot of different industries adopting this because it's a mindset change. And just not just using scrum. It's not just using Kanban. It is about understanding how to be able to reflect on and adapt to the faster changes that are happening in the world. And that also applies to our personal lives as well.

Sarah Hajipour:

I mean, I used to have set goals when I was 18-years-old, I'm going to be this at 30, but did they happen? No. In some aspects I achieved much, much more. And in some aspects I just changed my goal. I think the changes that are happening in the world that are more rapid, it demands us to change as well. Yeah.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah. Awesome. So just to circle back a little bit there for your podcast just for our audience listening, what platforms can they access your podcast on?

Sarah Hajipour:

I'm on all of the main platforms. I'm in Apple podcasts. I'm in Spotify, I'm in Amazon. Most of the prominent podcast platforms.

Caitlin Mackie:

Awesome. And then just again, for our audience, your podcast is called the Agility Podcast with Sarah Hajipour.

Sarah Hajipour:

That's correct. Yes.

Caitlin Mackie:

Awesome. That's great. What do you think has been the most valuable lesson you've learned from your podcast so far? Is it something a guest has shared or something you've learned along the way?

Sarah Hajipour:

What I have learned, I have learned a lot from the people that I interview because I make sure that I talk to people who know more than me and have been in this field more than me, and in different industries. The main thing I would say is that agile business agility is about mindset rather than the tools and processes. And the fact that the world overall is moving towards a more human-centric way of working.So basically that's why I say agile is more intuitive rather than just following ABCD. Yeah. This is the core, the main thing that that I have learned from my interviewees.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah, amazing. You've also started writing a book at the moment. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? How did that project begin?

Sarah Hajipour:

I actually love this project. In this book, the way I actually started writing the book was the book came first and then the podcast happened. I attend a lot of meetups. So for young professionals and even for professionals who are very much skilled in what they do, meetups are great place to meet and expand your network and learn from your peers. So I was attending all of these and I was learning from people. And then I decided I really want to have one-on-one conversations with them. And eventually I figured that a lot of the agile coaches, a lot of executive levels and a lot of consultants, they have a lot to share, but I didn't see any platform that kind of unifies that.

Sarah Hajipour:

I said, "Okay what are the learnings that we can share?" A lot of the mistakes because of the meetups groups, people feel safe to share and be vulnerable. And I was in multiple meetups so I heard very similar stories from people, the mistakes that have been repeated by a coach somewhere else. So I thought that'd be a great idea to put these in agile cases. So it's going to be Agile Case Studies and share it with everyone so. Especially the young coaches or stepping into the business, there's a lot of unknowns. I don't want them to be afraid. I don't want them to think, "Okay, this is a huge task." There's always going to be a lot of unknowns.

Sarah Hajipour:

Yes, I just see that. I kind of want to give that visibility that everybody else is experiencing the same, even if they have 25 years of experience, which is amazing, right?

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah.

Sarah Hajipour:

And that's the reason I started writing the book. So I interview with agile coaches and agile consultants that have been around at least five to 10 years and led agile transformation projects. And then from there, one of my interviewers once said, "You should do a podcast. I like to talk about this too." I'm like, "This is great" and that was like the week after I was like running around looking for tools to start my podcast.

Caitlin Mackie:

Oh, amazing. Sounds so good. What's the process been like? How have you found from ideation to where you are now, and then eventually when you're publishing it?

Sarah Hajipour:

For the podcast?

Caitlin Mackie:

For the book.

Sarah Hajipour:

For the book, so I go to these meetups and I listen to what's the coaches and the executives are sharing. The ones that are exciting for me are kind of a new for me, I will ask them, I connect with them over in LinkedIn and people are so open to sharing their experience with you. I've never had even one person said to tell me, "No, I don't want to talk about this or anything." People want to share. So I approach and I say, "Hey, I have a book outline or guideline. It's a two pager." I send it to them and I asked them if they are interested to talk to me about this and they let me know and then I'll select a time.

Sarah Hajipour:

And first session, it's like a half an hour. It's a kind of a brainstorming session. What are the key cases that they feel they want to share? Then we pick one and the session after that, they'll actually go through the case with me. I record it, draft it and then share it on Google Drive back and forth until we're happy with the outcome.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah. Awesome. Do you have a timeline at the moment? When can we expect to be able to read it?

Sarah Hajipour:

I'm looking forward to around the end of 2021, because it's 100 cases and I think that I'll have that.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah. Awesome. It's so exciting. Lots to look forward too.

Sarah Hajipour:

Thank you.

Caitlin Mackie:

Now, I also wanted to touch on International Women's Day is coming up and you've been in the agile space for a few years now. I assume you've probably witnessed a bit of change in this space. Have there been any pivotal moments that have sort of led to where you are today?

Sarah Hajipour:

Well, I think that a lot of women are being attracted to the agile practice, the different agile roles. And I have seen a lot more women as scrum masters, as product owners and as agile managers or agile project managers. A lot of different roles are being kind of flourishing in this area. And I've seen a lot of women contribute. One my goals actually in my book and on my podcast is to be able to find these women and talk to them regardless of where they are in the world. Yeah, I just feel that women can grow really in this area in the agile mindset, because women are more the collaboration piece.

Sarah Hajipour:

I can't tell we're less competitive. I haven't done research on that, but I have discussed it with people. Do you think that women are more collaborative rather than competitive? Because competition is great, but you need a lot of collaboration in agile and a lot of nurturing. You need to have that nurturing feeling, the nurturing mindset, that's what a scrum master does. One of the key characteristics of a scrum master has to be they have to have this nurturing perspective to bring it to the team.

Caitlin Mackie:

It's funny you mentioned because I actually have read some stuff myself about women typically possessing more of that open leadership style and that open leadership seems to complement the agile space really nicely so.

Sarah Hajipour:

That's exactly, yeah.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah. Yeah. That's great and I think there's lots that we can take from that, open leadership and the direct leadership. So men and women coming forward and finding that middle ground and yeah, I feel like agile is a great space to do that in?

Sarah Hajipour:

Yeah, I totally agree. Yeah.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah, yeah. So what drove your passion? I guess what made you want to pursue a career in this space?

Sarah Hajipour:

I love the collaboration piece and I love the vulnerability because like people are allowed to be vulnerable and in the teams that they work in. And it is a culture that is more human rather than super strict. We're not allowed to make mistakes. We're not allowed to be wrong. Leaders are supposed to know everything right off the bat. But in reality, that's not the case. Leaders have to feel comfortable not knowing a lot of things that are not even known. But a lot of times I always say we're in the unknown unknown zone. And in that zone, even leaders are not supposed to know everything.

Sarah Hajipour:

So a lot of it starts with what are the other things that I learned from my interviewees is that it all starts with the leadership. So the agile transformations, the leaders have to first create that atmosphere of collaboration and of trust and psychological safety among themselves. And then only then they can help with teams to be able to thrive in those kinds of atmospheres as well.

Sarah Hajipour:

Women in agile and women in leadership. I like to say and what I see is a lot of men and women both that are changing their perspective from process of tool-centric to people-centric because it works better for everyone. And I see change really happening in all industries. I see it in retail. I see it in construction, obviously in IT, in finance system. And there's men and women like hand-in-hand trying to kind of embrace this way of thinking and this way of working.

Sarah Hajipour:

And women are being more comfortable to grow and kind of raise their hand and say, "Hey, I can make each page. I can take this role" because they understand because they bring that psychological safety that women for ages, it has been a workplace has been something that was mostly men and we're gradually getting into the workforce or the business world as females. So that psychological safety has allowed women to raise their hand and grow in different roles and leadership roles obviously.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah, yeah. I couldn't agree more. Has there been any resources or networks, things like that that have helped you along your journey?

Sarah Hajipour:

Learning from everybody else like creating a network, expanding my network to kind of coming in and saying, "Hey, I don't know. I want to know." There is all of these amazing things that are happening. I like to understand how this works and I remember it was one of these founders. Who's the founder of Apple? Oh my God. Don't tell me.

Caitlin Mackie:

Steve Jobs.

Sarah Hajipour:

I love this quote from Steve Jobs that says, "There has never been a time where I asked for help and people didn't help me." So just raise your hand and say, "I need help." And what does that help that I need? I need to know about this. What does it mean? What does scrum mean to you? How does it work in your industry? How does it work? And really I think that was the key for me up until now to connect with people and just be vulnerable and let them teach me.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah. I think my next question would be about how do we amplify that diverse and empowered community of women and our job in increasing the representation of women in agile? And yeah, what do you think is key to achieve a supportive and enabling environment?

Sarah Hajipour:

What I have seen and realized is that women really need to be and are being more supportive of each other. There was a study in HBR, Harvard Business Review in 2016 that said, "If there is only one woman in the pool of the interviewees, there's a zero chance for that woman to get the job, even if she's the best." So this calls for not which women are actually working great on that. Not being the queen bee, but also engaging and including other women. Because the more women in different roles, the more we are going to be receptive in those communities. That I think is a key that we understand that and support each other, help each other, build the communities around it.

Sarah Hajipour:

There is a community Women in Agile that is in different cities and different parts of the world that I'm a member of as well doing a great job. It's not just women actually in those groups. I see men participating as well, but it's predominantly women are trying to give each other insights from all aspects of the agile practices, the agile ways of working and stuff. Yeah.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah. So I think what's the way forward? I guess what's your prediction for women in agile? What do we need to do to continue that momentum?

Sarah Hajipour:

I think women will do great in anything and everything they put their minds in, regardless. We're human bottom line and we all have this potential to be able to grow in whatever we put our mind and heart on, regardless of our gender. So I would love for women to kind of be able to get that holistic perspective that regardless of their gender, they can do anything and they are, we are.

Sarah Hajipour:

We read about other women who have been successful in the fields of business that you felt that probably women can't do like women astronauts. There are women physicists. Women engineering leads and all of these that have been less common. The world is changing for the better and that's great.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah, yeah. I absolutely love that

Sarah Hajipour:

It's a great time to be alive.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah. That's exciting. Yeah, exactly.

Sarah Hajipour:

Yes.

Caitlin Mackie:

Yeah. I definitely think that we are beginning to see a huge increase and the visibility of female role models across so many industries. So it's great to have that. But Sarah, this has been such a great conversation. I wanted to finish with a final question for you and that was if you could give one piece of advice to women just starting their career in their industry, what would it be?

Sarah Hajipour:

I would say maybe the best advice that I can give is that we do have the power. And we need to look, number one, beyond gender and kind of have that belief that we can do anything that we want. And second is don't be shy to open up and build your community like build a community, join a community of agile practitioners of agile coaches, even people, specifically people who know more than you.

Sarah Hajipour:

And don't be afraid to ask help. Don't be afraid to say, "Hey, I'm new to this and I love to learn from you guys." Don't be afraid to put yourself out there and you're going to learn a lot that you wouldn't even expect. Just like you're going to get the result so you're going to hear things beyond what you've expected. There's a lot to human potential that could be unleashed when you just put yourself out there and let others contribute to your growth.

Caitlin Mackie:

That's amazing. That's great advice, Sarah. Loved every minute of our conversation. So thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it.

Sarah Hajipour:

My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

"It was great to be able to have this conversation with Maysa and have her share her story. So many great takeaways." - Nick Muldoon

Join Nick Muldoon, Co-founder and Co-CEO of Easy Agile as he chats with Maysa Safadi, Engineering Manager at Easy Agile.

As a woman, growing up in the middle east and being passionate about pursuing a career in the world of tech, don’t exactly go hand in hand. Navigating her way through a very patriarchal society, Maysa talks about her career journey and how she got to where she is today.

Having the odds stacked against her, Maysa talks about challenging the status quo, the constant pressure to prove herself in a male-dominated industry, the importance of charting your own course and her hopes for the future of women in tech.

This is such an inspiring episode, we hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

Transcript

Nick Muldoon:

Hi, team. Nick Muldoon, co-founder co-CEO at Easy Agile, and I'm joined today by Maysa Safadi, who's an engineering manager here at Easy Agile. We'll get into Maysa's story and journey in just a little bit, but before we do, I just wanted to say a quick acknowledgement to the traditional custodians of the land from which we are recording and indeed broadcasting today, and they are the people of the Dharawal speaking country just south of Sydney and Australia. We pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging, and extend that same respect to all Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander and First Nations people that are joining us and listening in today. Maysa, welcome. Thanks for joining us.

Maysa Safadi:

Thank you, Nick. Thank you for inviting me.

Nick Muldoon:

So, Maysa's on today. We're going to explore Maysa's journey on her career to this point, and I think one of the things that interests me in Maysa's journey is she's come from a fairly patriarchal society in the Middle East, and has overcome a lot of odds that some of her peers didn't overcome, and she's managed to come to Australia, start a family in Australia, has three beautiful children and is an engineering manager after spending so many years as a software engineer. So, Maysa, I'd love to learn a little bit about the early stages of your life and how you got into university.

Maysa Safadi:

I was born and raised in United Arab Emirates. I am one of nine. I have three brothers and five sisters. I'm the middle child actually. Dad and mom, they were very focused on really raising good healthy kids and more important is to educate all of their kids regardless if they are boys or girls. Started my education at schools there. When I graduated from high school, I end up getting enrolled in a college like what you call it here in Australia, TAFE.

Education in United Arab Emirates, it's not free. Being one of nine and having that aim and goal for my father to educate all of us. When it comes to education, it was two factors that play big part of it. Can dad afford sending me to that college or university? and then after I finish, will I be able to find a job in that field? One of my dream jobs, I remember growing up I wanted to be a civil engineer, and I remember my older brother, he's the second, was telling me it's good that you want to study civil engineering. Remember, you will not be able to find a job.

Nick Muldoon:

Tell me why.

Maysa Safadi:

United Arab Emirates, it's male dominated country. Civil engineering is a male dominated industry. If you are going to look for a job after a graduation, it is pretty much given to males and Emirati males first. So, kind of it needs to go very down in the queue before it gets to me, and to be realistic, sometimes you give up your dreams because you know that you are not going to have a chance later in life.

Nick Muldoon:

Oh, my gosh, this is demoralizing.

Maysa Safadi:

Unfortunately.

Nick Muldoon:

Okay,

Maysa Safadi:

So, the decision for me to get to engineering, it was, again, I couldn't really go to university because it was too expensive. My older sister had a friend who told her about this institute that they are teaching computers. When it came to mom and dad, they really told us, "Do whatever you want, study whatever you want, it is you who is going to basically study that field and you need to like it and you need to make sure that you can make the most of it." So, with that institute, it was reasonably okay for my dad to pay for my fees and they were teaching computers. I thought, "Yeah, all right, computers, it is in science field, right? I can't maybe study civil engineering, but I'm really very interested to know more about computers."

Nick Muldoon:

Similar, close enough.

Maysa Safadi:

Close enough. I end up getting enrolled and I remember the very first subject was fundamentals of computers or computer fundamentals, something like this, and I thought, "Yeah, all right, that is interesting," and I did really finish my education from there. After two years I ended up getting a diploma in computer science.

Nick Muldoon:

So, was this a unique situation for you or were most of your girlfriends from high school also going on to college?

Maysa Safadi:

It's unique actually, unique to my family. I'm not saying it's rare, you will find other families doing it, but it's not common. It is unique because, yes, most of the girls, if not all they go to school, it's compulsory in United Arab Emirate, but very small number of them pursue higher education. Pretty much girls, they end up finishing school and the very first chance to get married, they end up getting married and starting their own family. I remember-

Nick Muldoon:

And you've chosen a different path because-

Maysa Safadi:

Oh, yeah.

Nick Muldoon:

... yes, you have a family today obviously, but you established your career, you didn't finish school and get married.

Maysa Safadi:

I think I really give so much credit to mom and dad in that sense. They told us education is more important than starting a family or getting married. They said, "Finish your degree, finish your education, then get married." The other thing they said, "Do not even get married while you are studying because for sure you won't be able to finish it. Maybe because your husband wouldn't want you to finish it. Maybe you will become so busy with the kids and you will put it back." I remember actually so many times with my older sisters when someone, it's traditional marriage there, when some people come and propose to marry or to propose for their hands, my dad always used to say, "No, finish your education first."

Nick Muldoon:

So, this is interesting because I think your eldest was born when you went and actually continued education and got your master's, is that correct?

Maysa Safadi:

Yes. I got diploma in computer science. However, I always wanted a bachelor degree. I knew that there is more to it. I fell in love with computing but I wanted more, and always I had that perception in mind, "If I'm going to get a better opportunity, then I have to have a better certificate or education." So, I thought getting a bachelor degree is going to give me better chances. I was working in United Arab Emirates and saving money, and Wollongong University had a branch there in Dubai. So, I had my eyes on finishing my degree there. Eventually I end up enrolling at Wollongong University, Dubai campus, to get my bachelor degree in computer science.

Nick Muldoon:

So, just for folks that are listening along, Wollongong is the regional area of Australia where Maysa and I and many of our team live. So, University of Wollongong is the local Wollongong University that has a branch in Dubai.

Nick Muldoon:

So you were with University of Wollongong doing this bachelor degree, and how did you make the transition and move to Australia?

Maysa Safadi:

When I was studying at Wollongong University, Dubai campus, and was working at the same time to be able to pay the fees, I met my husband at work, and happened that he has a skilled migrant visa to come to Australia, coincident. So, I was thinking, "All right, he is going to go to Australia, he is a person that I do really see spending the rest of my life with. So, how about if I transfer my papers to Wollongong University here in Australia, finish my degree from here, while he gets the chance to live in the country, and then we can make our minds. 'Is it a place for us to continue our life here?' If not, it was a good experience. If good, that is another new experience and journey that we are going to take." So, we end up coming to Australia. I finished my degree from here.

Nick Muldoon:

What did you find when you arrived at Australia? How was it different from United Arab Emirates? How was it different for women? How was it different for women in engineering given what your brother had said about civil engineering in Dubai?

Maysa Safadi:

I had a culture shock when I came to Australia. Yes, I was in a country that.... male-dominated country, third world country, no opportunities for females, to a country where everything is so different. The way of living, the communication, the culture, everything was so different. When it comes to engineering, because I didn't really finish my degree in United Arab Emirate, so I didn't even get the chance to work in engineering though. However, knowing about the country and knowing about the way they take talents in, I knew I had slim chances. Now, coming to Australia and to finish my degree at the university, it was challenging. Someone from the Middle East, english is second language, being in computer degree where looking around me, "My god, where are the girls? I don't really see many of them around." And then, yeah, getting into that stereotype of industry or of a field where it is just only for males.

Nick Muldoon:

Yeah, so a bit of a culture shock coming across. I guess fast forward, you've spent a decade in software engineering and then progressing into engineering leadership. What was the change and how did you perceive the change going from a team member to a people leader?

Maysa Safadi:

I graduated from Wollongong University and I end up getting a job at Motorola as a graduate software engineer. In the whole team there was three females.

Nick Muldoon:

How big was the team?

Maysa Safadi:

How big was the team? It was around 20.

Nick Muldoon:

Okay.

Maysa Safadi:

Yep. There was the network team which had, I can't remember how many, but it was a different team. The team I was in, it is development team, and there was three girls in there, one of them another graduate that end up coming to the program and one that started a year before. Interesting, these two females, they are not in IT anymore. I really loved the problem solving, I really loved seeing the outcome of my work in people's hands because I was developing features for mobile phones. So, all was in mind then as an IC, how to become better at my work, how to learn more, how to prove myself to everyone that I'm capable as much as any other male in the team.

Nick Muldoon:

Do you think, Maysa, that that's something that you've had to do throughout your career to prove yourself?

Maysa Safadi:

Yes, yes. It's a tough industry. Really not seeing so many females it makes it hard because you look for role models that makes you think, "Oh, she made it. I can make it. If she's still in there, then I can learn from her." I missed all of that. I never had another mentor in my career or having even a female manager in all of the jobs I had before. So, always I was dealing with males, always I was trying to navigate my way to show them the different perspective I can bring. Even the subtle interactions I used to have with them giving me that, "You are not capable enough. You are not there yet. This is our territory. Why are you here?" All of these things, it does really, without you think about it, it does really sink your self-esteem and the self-worth when you are in industries like this. Yeah.

Nick Muldoon:

So, I'm conscious, you know are in this position now, you've kind of talked about you can't be what you can't see. If you can't see a woman that's a people leader and you're not reporting to one, then it's hard to see how you can become that. But, here you are, you have become that, and for our team here, you are one of the women leaders in the company, which is fantastic. So, I guess, what are the sorts of activities that you are undertaking to try and be present and be visible that you can be a woman people leader in the engineering field. I think it was earlier last month perhaps that you were at WomenHack in Sydney.

Maysa Safadi:

Yes, I've been-

Nick Muldoon:

What's WomenHack?

Maysa Safadi:

Okay. WomenHack, it is organization to bring diverse talented women intake together, to support them, to educate them, and not just only that, to try to connect them with other companies that they appreciate diversity and inclusion, and basically try to recruit... Pretty much, it is finding opportunities for women in tech, in companies that they do value the diversity.

Nick Muldoon:

Okay. So, I think it's interesting, I see these parallels here between your mom and dad that kind of went out on a limb and extended themselves financially to get six girls through a college and university education in the Middle East, and they were doing something that was perhaps fairly progressive at the time. You said it wasn't common. It sounds like WomenHack is bringing together more progressive companies these days, that are creating opportunities for women to get into leadership or even to accelerate their careers.

Maysa Safadi:

Yes, it is so pleasing to see the change that has happened over the years. When I reflect back in 2000, when I graduated and end up working in IT, and all of the behaviors, there was no knowledge or there was no awareness how much diversity is important, and they were not even aware that really females are really quitting the field or not that many females enrolls in the first place in degrees like computing or engineering. Even education through the school, no awareness was there. Then you see now the progress that is happening, more awareness is during school. Universities, they are trying to make the degrees or the fields more inviting for females and diversity. They are trying to bridge the gaps. So, many companies that are taking action to make it easier for females to be in the field and to progress in the field.

So, WomenHack, there are so many other groups like Women in Tech, there are so many companies that are allies to females in tech as well, where they are trying to really support and make their voice heard by other companies. Is as well all of the research and the science, are really proving that having diversity in teams, it is going to be more beneficial for the companies, for the teams, to have more engaging teams having these differences. So, yeah, there is a lot of awareness happening at the moment, and so many companies are trying to do something about it. I wish if that was early on.

Nick Muldoon:

Earlier in your career.

Maysa Safadi:

Earlier in my career, yes. So, many times I felt so isolated. So many times I was sitting back and saying, "Is it worth the fight?" Why do I have to work always twice as hard, to just only prove that I'm capable? Why does it have to be this way? Why I'm not equal?" That what actually made me change my career from IC to people leader. I didn't want to put other females... Being people leader wasn't just only for females, it was for me to voice, to be able to help pretty much. People leader to be able to help anyone in the field regardless if they are males or females. Moreso is to lead by example, is to be a role model for others, is to show others that if I can make it, then definitely you can as well, is to provide the support, it's to build that trust.

Nick Muldoon:

So, how can we, as an industry, I guess, how do we change... I'm reflecting on Iran at the moment, and the activities that have taken place over the last 60 days in particular, but really just more media coverage for hundreds of years of oppression of women. What do you hope, you being a people leader, a woman that's come from the Middle East, what do you hope for these young women and girls in our Iran over their trajectory? If we're still making a journey here in Australia, in a male dominated industry, what sort of hope do you have over the 20 years from here to 2040, for these women that are in the Middle East today and still haven't found a progressive society?

Maysa Safadi:

Politics. It's the game of power. Really hoping is the awareness to get there for these females in locked countries to know that there are better opportunities for them. They need to be stronger, they need to support each other, they need to empower each other. As much as it is easy said, it's not that easy done. However, all of that frustration that is built in them, it is surfacing from time to time. I'm really hoping for Iranian women, not just only Iranians, I'm really hoping for every woman in the world, regardless if it is a third world country or even if it is advanced country like Australia, is to always feel that they are worthy, is always to feel that they can have a voice, they can be part of life, and they are doing meaningful things.

Now, if they are raised in a way that always being told you are second, always being told you role only to get married and raise family, they will believe it themselves. So, it needs to come from women like us, leading by example, being role models, sending the awareness. Really media, we need to use the media very well so we can get to these people who are really locked in their countries now thinking that this is normal. It a lot of work needs to happen.

Nick Muldoon:

Well, that's an interesting observation. It is normalized for them, isn't it? So, look, reflecting on my own upbringing, I remember that my parents would always say you can achieve anything you put your mind to, but I could open up the newspaper, I could look on TV and I could see a host of people that were people that look like me, that is white males that were Australian, that were successful in business, and so I believed that I could do and be whatever I wanted to do and be. So, I guess, how do we get this message out? How do we tell your story more broadly to get this message out? That you can do whatever you put your mind to, you can achieve whatever you hope to achieve. There's something interesting for me to reflect on about the media piece that you're talking about.

Maysa Safadi:

Yeah, and I think the countries that they are advanced, the countries that they are really recognizing women more and more, they are more responsible in sending that awareness. They have to do more. It is basically, yeah, media, it is such an important thing. This is what people read everyday or watch everyday.

Nick Muldoon:

I guess, I'm conscious, like we're talking about half a world away in the Middle East, but you're actually involved in a community group here at home. What's that group that you're involved in and how's that helping women?

Maysa Safadi:

Yeah, I'm a board member for organization called Women Illawarra. It is run by women, for women. Basically this organization is to help women in domestic violence, it's basically to set them in the right path. It gives them services and it does educate them and even help them with the counseling, with legal support so they can get out of these situations. Make them believe that they can be part of this society, that they are important voice in the society, in the community, and they can really contribute and make an impact. So, by providing this education and this support, it is empowering these women to take matters their hand, and again, to really set the path for their own life and their own success. They need to take control back again, and yeah, even help their kids see their moms that they are really doing the right thing.

Nick Muldoon:

It's this interesting thread that comes through in your entire life story and your journey, that mom and dad wanted you to have an education so that you were empowered to chart your own course in life-

Maysa Safadi:

Yes.

Nick Muldoon:

... and here you are today, giving back to other women, trying to help them get an education and feel empowered so that they can chart their own course in life. I think that's fantastic. Thank you, Maysa.

Maysa Safadi:

Thank you.

Nick Muldoon:

What is your hope for women over the next 10 years? Because it sounds like we're on a trajectory, we're making progress in some countries, we're not making as much progress in other countries. What's your hope for 2030? What does it look like?

Maysa Safadi:

My hope for 2030, or my hope for... I really hope it is even five years, less than 10 years. My hope for 10 years is not to have conversations about how to reduce the gap between males and females, because by the 10 years time, that should be the way everyone operates. My hope in 10 years time is to have equal opportunities for anyone regardless what's their gender, background, language they speak, physical abilities, it needs to be equal, it needs to.... Equity, it is such an important thing. Giving exposure to the same opportunity, it is so important regardless what's your abilities. Stereotyping, I need that to get totally erased from the world.

We are all a human, we did not really choose where we born, who our parents are, what our upbringing, what our financial situation, it wasn't our choice, why do we have to get penalized for it? We have responsibility toward the world to help everyone. We are social people, we really thrive when we have good connections and good bonds, we really need to tap into the things that makes us better. So, we have so many talents that we can use it to the benefits of the world. I know countries always going to have fights and politics, that everyone is looking for the power, that's not going to disappear. But us, as people part of this world, we really need to try to uplift and upskill everyone around us. I really hope for the females in all of the other countries to know that they are worth it, to know that they are as good as anyone else. They have the power, they don't realize how much strength and power they have. So, it comes from self-belief. Believe in yourself, and you will be surprised how much you will be able to achieve.

Nick Muldoon:

There you go. Believe in yourself and you'll be surprised with how much you are able to achieve. Maysa Safadi thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it.

Maysa Safadi:

Thank you so much Nick. Thank you everyone.