Her Story
About Shami
My professional journey spans 30 years, beginning as a nursing student who took a sales job at Dell Computers in Austin, Texas to pay off my student loans. I never went back to nursing - instead, I grew through corporate America, moving into training, learning and development, and eventually leadership roles that took me all the way to Senior VP at Liberty Mutual. Being the matriarch of a multilingual family - my husband speaks 5 languages, he's a Haitian immigrant, and my daughter-in-laws are from Latin America so my grandchildren speak Spanish first - I saw firsthand the challenges of language barriers. That personal experience, combined with my deep background in learning and development, led me to found OViiE AI two years ago. We build language translation technology for enterprise, hospitality, and the public sector. The turning point was working at Disney and seeing the invisible gap that no one wanted to tackle - the language barrier problem in employee onboarding and training. Right now, I'm in Houston activating FIFA host cities, preparing hospitality partners to welcome the world for the FIFA World Cup. Every day is a mix of tech talks with my engineering team, vision and strategy with my C-suite and co-founders, and finance discussions with my CFO as we build the foundation for the next 20-30 years. Building a technology from a vision and seeing it come to life, then deploying it in a live service environment and watching it impact the world - that's been my most rewarding achievement.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Shami
01What do you attribute your success to?
For me, I would have to say family. Family is what started this. I'm the matriarch of a multilingual family. My husband speaks 5 different languages - he's a Haitian immigrant. My daughter-in-laws are from Latin America, so my grandchildren speak Spanish first. I travel a lot with family, so that's always been big, and I was born into a military family, so definitely it has to be family.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
I would have to say from my auntie - to never give up, to stay the course, and even when I don't think I can, I can.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
If you can dream it, you can definitely bring it to life. I would tell someone young, like myself, coming into this field young in career nature, to go for it. If you're not invited into the rooms, build the rooms. If you're not invited to the table, build the table. As women, we can accomplish so much, and we have such strong tenacity and perseverance. Just never give up. Dream it and go for it.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
Being a woman in tech is the biggest challenge. Being a woman in tech is different in this space. A lot of us, as women, we think that it's a lot easier for us to kind of walk into some of the rooms that we have to earn our way into. We're in a space where it was solely dominated by men, and we have to prove ourselves three times harder, to just show them that we are just as serious, and we can accomplish great things when we put our minds to it. And we build businesses, all while taking care of the family.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Trust and integrity are foundational for me. Accountability is critical. And empowerment - empower the woman behind you and above you, because we all need that positive encouragement. These values guide everything I do, both professionally and personally.
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