Ameena Ali

I attribute my success to women. My grandmother, the elders in the community, they were mothers who taught my mother how to be a mother. The elders who had done it before could impart knowledge and show me things my mother couldn't or hadn't experienced yet. They were the bread and butter of the structuring of who I am. I was blessed to know my great-grandmother until I was young, and my grandmother until I was a teenager, so I had the blessing of knowing that there were people that came before me that had purpose for me. My mother was the first to go to college, I was the first to become a doctor, and now I have 5 daughters who are all college-educated, married, and professional in their own right. So the linear progression, before me and after me, was the seeding. I have to give credit to the 5 women I gave birth to, the many women that I came from, and then parallel, the women that encourage me, the mentors, those big sisters, those women that were pioneers in medicine for women. And the women that came with me, that said 'I don't know what to do, I don't know either. Let's figure it out together.' And the women like yourself that are gonna give me a chance for this influential piece. So, yeah, women.

Keep going, and grab a mentor. That's the best advice I could give, because had I known that when I was young and navigating my field of responsibility and adulthood, I don't even think I was an adult, I was just legal. If I could have realized that if you just keep going, a lot of the questions that you have will be answered, and a lot of what it is that you seek you will get. Just keep going, and grab a mentor. Grab someone that has already mastered what you're asking about. My grandmother would say, you know, if you want wisdom, stay in the library, because there's books that are older than you, yet they carry information that you need to know today. So that is a real-time mentor in that field. If you want to know something about economics, follow someone that has been in economics for 30 years, that started off asking those same questions. Grab a mentor as early as possible, even if it's your own family members. Just grab someone, and sit under them, and just pick their brain until they are either tired or you're out of questions.

The biggest challenges are still being a woman, unfortunately. The gender parity in that. Being an educated woman, which is a fear factor now for some reason. Especially if you apply for something, it's like, oh, well, you may not be a fit, because you're overqualified. I hear that, and unfortunately, I don't understand what that means. I still don't, almost at my age, and I don't understand what overqualified means. With all due respect, if they don't want you, they will find a way to tell you they don't want you, so I have to respect that. But I see the challenge of being a woman in society that has not been seen before or recognized before. One of the reasons I wanted to come with Influential Women is to be a part of something bigger than me, to be able to say that it's not just me, there are a thousand more women that speak this language, that we are available, we are ready, we are here. And again, fully transparent, it's necessary. Unfortunately, I don't know how to be respected individually, but you can't knock us all down if we come together. Being a part of something large like this allows us to see that we have someone that relates and can be with us, not behind us or in front of us, and be fabulous.

In my work, integrity is most important. Integrity means not only do you define the word, but you know what it looks like when you see it, you know what it looks like when it shows up. You can define it yourself, you recognize when it's slipping in certain dynamics, like, oh, this is something we gotta look at. And then you are integral to bring it in a diplomatic manner. Just because something is wrong doesn't mean you need to just oust someone and embarrass them. Maybe pull them aside and remind them, or if there's a woman that has not grown in her integrity, you can mentor softly, gently. If you are seeing something that is not right, you know is not right, you speak up about it, and you use what is required in that normalcy. Like, if someone drops the ball on a meeting or doesn't have an agenda, I can say, well, the last time you and I spoke, we talked about A, B, C, D, and E. So now, in real time, we're creating an agenda that is allowing you to shine well, because I'm giving points of what we talked about, and then making it seem as though you and I had already discussed it, you just physically hadn't formatted it to paper. So the integral piece is helping you without letting others know that you needed the help.