Salma Babul

I attribute my success to perseverance, just keeping my head down and trying to get through it, and giving myself some grace. My mom came here as an immigrant, as a teenager. She didn't have the opportunity to go to college, but one of the things that I really learned from her is life knocks you down, you get back up, and you try harder. She's been through many jobs, and she's finally in a place where she's working for Amazon as one of their project managers. Seeing her come from working as a cashier at a Dunkin' Donuts to now being a lead under a giant Fortune 100 company is really amazing. It just shows me that if you're willing to work hard and keep going, sky's the limit. My mom's a no-one-can-mess-with-me type of woman.

The best advice I've received wasn't something that was given to me directly, it was something that I just observed over my time as a professional. I noticed that men tend to just go for it and believe they'll figure it out, while females want to figure it out before they take a step, and sometimes they don't end up taking one because they're talking themselves out of it. Just realizing that has made me a little bit more fearless and has made me feel my value a little bit more. Even this position at HEXA, they did not have a job posting online, they weren't looking - I just messaged the CEO and was like, hey, this is what I want, I want to work until 2:30, you're right next door, this is my background, and they found a place for me. Because I asked.

My advice would be just go for it and figure it out later. You don't have to have everything perfect before you take a step. I've been through situations where I'll be in a meeting and I'll have an idea and it'll get rejected, and 2 minutes later a man says the same idea and it's the greatest thing they've ever heard. I've been in situations where I run payroll and I can clearly see the pay difference between male and females and there's no logical reason behind it. I've even been in the position where I'm hiring for two exact same positions, one is a man, one is a female, and just because the man asked for more and the female was afraid to, he got more. So I went back to the recruiter and I was like, just tell her to ask, and I'll give it to her. I feel like men have been raised to just be brave and just go for it and figure it out later, and females generally overthink before they tend to take a step. So just go for it and figure it out later.

The biggest opportunity in my field right now is just to help this space grow. We're in talks with even co-working spaces across the Atlantic and trying to see if we can partner with them somehow. This space of not just being a co-working space, but an innovation center, a collaboration center, can mean a lot of things for startups. You might have the technical skills but you might not have the networking skills, or you might need a salesperson personality to partner up with. You just never know when you will meet someone and how that collaboration could turn into something, and I love that this place encourages that. When I was in the legal field, it was very clear to me that challenges existed because I wasn't a lawyer, or because I was a minority female who didn't look a certain way - that's my personal experience. But in the space I'm in right now, I absolutely love it. Everyone is very collaborative, no one has an ego. If the CEO sees a piece of trash on the ground, he's not going to tell someone else to go pick it up, he'll do it himself. I love being in a space like that where you're thinking big but you're also a team player, and if you see something in front of you that needs to be fixed, you just do it.

Integrity is the most important value to me. There are people that talk a big game and don't have anything to show for it, and then there are those that just put their head down and work but also forget to ask for what their value is. I am big on quality over showing off. I appreciate the people that work hard, are team players, and not just showing off and really don't have anything to back up their words. I've encountered a lot of people who present very well, who speak with confidence, and then when you kind of get to work with them, it's clear that they're just delegating it to other people and just want the credit. You have to put the hard work in too.