Tabinda Mushtaq

I definitely attribute my success to my mother. She is highly educated but was unable to do anything professionally because she is a housewife. At that time, the setup of our society was not like that, where women go out and contribute professionally and work in offices. But my mother never gave up on us - on all four of us, three sisters and one brother. Now, all three sisters are highly educated, all of us are in different fields, and we all are very good. All three of us have education from the U.S. from very reputable universities, and we are working in very good positions. I wanted to give a tribute to my mother because she always gave us the boost and the confidence. She sacrificed her life to give us wherever we want to be.

Don't give up. Don't give up at any cost. When I look back at my journey, coming from a country like Pakistan where we don't have such kind of educational facilities, and working in such a changing environment - being in my home country, I could never get the kind of opportunity where I have this position and can work in so many different dimensions. But honestly, I never gave up. I continued not only in my education, but also in my pursuit to enhance my education, enhance my knowledge, and my personal growth in terms of my professional career. This is the advice I really want to give everyone - never give up, even if you are in a very good position. Try and try to make yourself better in terms of knowledge and your professional knowledge and the industry knowledge. And try to share this knowledge with others. I believe this can really make a difference in the world. You have to be out of the box. Not only in your field, try to interact with other field people and try to see what they are doing and how they are doing. Maybe the way they are doing something can help you, and if you try to incorporate or mimic that thing in your field, maybe it gives the world something new, something which is valuable that makes people's life easy.

I believe currently the opportunities are so many, and the thing is that you have to discover them. It totally depends on your vision and how you make things possible. I'll give you the example of my own position. Initially, when I was recruited, they only announced it to be like a project manager kind of job. But when I looked at the need of our department, I let my company know that I can provide this and this, and I have the ability to learn how to design software. This will be beneficial for the entire company because I have the knowledge of supply chain. When you give something to a software engineer, they only know how to write the codes and design a software. But you know what your need is, so you make your design. You translate your need into something visual and give that to the software engineer, then they can better design it. It totally depends on you how you discover your avenue and how you open up your vision. That really contributes.

Hard work, being loyal to whatever you are doing, and honesty.