Fatima Babakura, 21-year-old founder of Nigerian Heritage, and creative director of Timbee, based in Canada (@fatimaBabakura) “I’m the founder of a fashion accessory brand. It started as a hobby and it turned into a business. It has been a successful journey so far. What social media has done for me and my business has been amazing. I started out with no money when I was in grade 10 except for the 150 dollars in savings. I lost it right away on the business so I realised early on that to have money, I had to make money. What I did was take to Instagram. I took a picture of a handbag I had made and put it up there. People loved it and started ordering it. Now four years down the road, we put out two collections of accessories a year. On average if the collection is successful we make around $10,000, and I’m still in my final year of college.”
Ritu Smita Biswas – Director of SDB Digital Brands, India (@RituSmitaBiswas)
“Your social media should be an about personal branding and that may involve sacrifice and dedication from you so have created an online presence that you will be proud to call yours. Your brand or what you stand for is best defined as what people say about you when you’re not in the room.”
Luiza Cristina Fernandes Palma – Portugal chairperson of Women Economic Forum, CEO of WalkEnergy, a clean energy company from Portugal (@MontePio @LuizaPalma)
“A new economic model must be introduced now, we should engage in building it right now. I have 6 daughters, and I don’t have enough time to wait again for another 100 years to have gender parity like we had to wait for aeons to have the right to vote. I want to announce today that I will be proposing soon to the World Bank a new economic model that all the banks in the world can use. It will be an economic model that will create gender parity. We are talking about 30 million dollars here. We cannot wait any longer. “
There were more incredible life coaches and women entrepreneurs who said that your digital footprint must stand for something meaningful. They also said that we can only learn and enrich our lives and businesses when our online ‘friends and contacts’ are people we truly care about, inspire us and are people we would like to be associate with even in the real world. This relationship-centric message came from:
1. Brittany Garth – International life coach, author and owner of Dimensioned Wellness, USA (she was voted one of the top 50 online social media influencers by a leading international magazine) (@LifeCoachBrit_)
2. Dr Fungai Mtisi – founder and managing director for ImageXchange, Zimbabwe (@Marketingfungaimtisi)
3. Senela Jayasuriya-Abeynaike – Business and life coach with experience heading people development at American MNC (she’s on LinkedIn)
4. Vaneese Johnson – Brand strategist, the Boldness coach from USA (@boldnesscoach)
Dorothy Githae – CEO and founder, 360 Degrees International of Kenya (@360Degress, @DorothyGithae)
“I work with women entrepreneurs to inspire and encourage them especially to use social and digital marketing skills so that they can get their businesses online. Because with social media there’s so much that can be achieved. I’m a proud African, from a continent that is rising. I also come from a country whose capital city was nominated number 1 in the world for innovation.
Let me share some social media statistics from our business in Kenya. Today in our world you cannot live without seeing a symbol for Facebook, Google, WhatsApp or the ‘Like’ button. People see social media as a negative influence in our lives and more used for political propaganda.
I’m here to tell you today that your life and your business can be enriched using social media. Not every woman will have the means to travel all the way to Delhi to be a part of forums like this. However with the use of the social media you can. With social media our team from Kenya consisting of young Kenyans tweeted about our company’s presence at WEF 2017, using the hashtag, “#WEF2017”. The result was astounding. On Day 1 alone, we had generated 4 million likes or mentions about the WEF. So you see we can use social media to spread positive messages like that of WEF we are sharing in this room in real time.”
BW Reporters
Regina is a reporter for BW Businessworld. In her previous assignments, she has worked with Independent television Network as a news anchor and reporter in Sri Lanka
