An immigrant woman's critical examination of meritocracy in corporate culture, revealing how visibility and proximity to power amplify or diminish recognition of performance, exposing structural blind spots in leadership assessment.
Her Story
About Hanna
Hanna Khalil is a Senior Program Manager at Amazon, where she leverages her expertise in supply chain management and artificial intelligence to optimize operational strategies and enhance capacity management. Over the course of her career, Hanna has held key roles in outbound operations and area management, collaborating with cross-functional teams to implement process improvements that drive efficiency and performance. Her leadership in operational execution, project management, and team development has earned her recognition as a results-oriented and innovative professional in a fast-paced, customer-focused environment.
Currently pursuing an MBA with a specialization in Artificial Intelligence at Arizona State University’s W. P. Carey School of Business, Hanna is deeply invested in exploring the intersection of emerging technologies and supply chain operations. She has built a strong foundation in AI, prompt engineering, and AI ethics, applying this knowledge to foster human-AI collaboration and deliver practical, scalable solutions. Hanna’s academic pursuits reflect her commitment to lifelong learning, innovation, and leveraging cutting-edge tools to transform business outcomes.
Beyond her professional and academic accomplishments, Hanna actively contributes to professional communities and technology initiatives. She is a member of the Association of Change Management Professionals and NeuroTech X, and she has engaged in projects ranging from UX design to app development for wellness and anxiety management. Fluent in both English and Arabic, Hanna combines technical acumen with cross-cultural communication skills, enabling her to unite diverse teams, drive collaboration, and achieve meaningful impact across global operations.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Hanna
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to a combination of strong leadership, dedication, and the support of those around me. Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of leading eight managers and guiding teams through initiatives that span from organizational change to community engagement, including involvement in NSLS and various society projects. Outside of work, I value balance and connection through activities like volleyball, travel, and game nights, which help me maintain perspective and energy.
My family, especially my mother Rosha, has been a constant source of inspiration and guidance, instilling in me the resilience and drive to go the extra mile. This dedication was recently recognized when I received the Extra Mile Award in Q1 2025, which reinforced my commitment to leading with integrity, fostering collaboration, and making a meaningful impact.
I believe that success is not just about personal achievements but also about lifting others, building strong teams, and embracing opportunities for growth both professionally and personally.
Her Content Hub
Articles by Hanna
The Myth of Meritocracy — From an Immigrant Woman Who Actually Did the Math
How Meritocracy Masks the Systems That Determine Who Gets Seen
Meritocracy is one of the most comforting ideas in modern corporate culture. At its core, it promises fairness: individuals advance based on ability, effort, and measurable performance. Talent and results—not background, identity, or proximity to power—are meant to determine success.
For a long time, I believed in this framework wholeheartedly.
As an immigrant woman working in high-performance environments where everything is tracked, forecasted, and optimized, meritocracy didn’t just feel fair—it felt mathematical. Work hard. Deliver results. Advance.
So I tested the system the way I approach any complex operation: by examining inputs, incentives, and outcomes.
Across roles in large-scale operations and forecasting, I consistently delivered measurable impact—improving accuracy, scaling systems, and supporting global teams across regions and cultures. On paper, the inputs were strong. The outputs, however, were inconsistent.
That’s when the pattern became clear.
Merit did matter—but it did not operate alone.
Visibility, cultural communication norms, accent bias, and proximity to decision-makers functioned as multipliers. These factors didn’t replace performance; they amplified or diluted it. Two individuals could deliver comparable results and experience vastly different outcomes based on forces rarely acknowledged in performance reviews.
Meritocracy, then, isn’t a lie.
It’s an incomplete model.
And like any incomplete model, it produces distorted conclusions.
Immigrant women are often positioned at the intersection of high execution and low narrative ownership. We run complex systems, translate across cultures, absorb operational risk, and stabilize outcomes—while others are rewarded for visibility rather than value creation.
When organizations claim to be meritocratic without interrogating how merit is recognized, interpreted, and rewarded, they mistake objectivity for neutrality. The result is not always overt bias, but structural blind spots embedded in how leadership potential is assessed.
The real question is not whether merit matters.
It does.
The question is whether leaders are willing to account for the unseen variables that determine whose merit is noticed—and whose is quietly normalized.
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