Episode 3 features open education innovator, Maha Bali. Maha Bali comes from a family of medical doctors but she fancied studying computer science. This was not to last however, as it didn’t gel with personality as an extrovert. She then made the happy option of becoming an educator. Maha’s love of interacting and connecting with people led her to co-found virtually Connecting a grassroots movement that challenges academic gatekeeping at conferences. She is currently an Associate Professor of Practice at the Centre for Learning and Teaching at the American University in Cairo. She is also the co-facilitator of Equity Unbound, an equity-focused, open, connected intercultural learning curriculum.

Our second podcast features Maryana Iskander. After over half a decade of working with Planned Parenthood as their Chief Operating Officer, she fell in love and made the jump from the United States to the southernmost tip of Africa. Even though this love affair didn’t last, her love affair with South Africa did, and it ushered her into a career path that saw her working on solving the problems of youth unemployment in Africa, to her current position, leading the Wikimedia Foundation. Prior to Wikimedia, she spent ten years as the CEO of Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator, a non-profit social enterprise focused on building African solutions to tackle the global crisis of youth unemployment. Under her leadership, Harambee received the prestigious Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship in 2019 for its model to support millions of South African youth with access to learning and earning opportunities. Maryana has dedicated her career to breaking down systemic barriers to access to opportunity and education. She has a proven track record for scaling complex organizations through collaborative solution-building and community empowerment. She spent more than half a decade as the Chief Operating Officer of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. She was also the Advisor to the President of Rice University, an associate at the global consulting firm McKinsey & Company, and a law clerk on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

Inspiring Open launches with its very first episode focused on Anie Akpe, the founder of African Women in Tech. Anie started her business for the same reason many entrepreneurs do – to solve a problem that impacted her firsthand. Through her work as vice president of mortgages and operations, managing a $1.5 billion dollar real estate portfolio which included Loss Mitigation and Mortgage Servicing,  Anie realised people asked her a lot of questions about business, but little to none about technology. It was then that she birthed her idea of teaching African women in the diaspora, and later in Africa, how to leverage technology and business to succeed in the world today. She has more than 25 years of combined experience in her chosen fields and we are pleased to have her as our guest today.

A sample teaser for Inspiring Open