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Born in Soviet Kazakhstan, Dr Nadya Zhexembayeva experienced extreme volatility firsthand when the Soviet Union collapsed, leaving her country without a stable currency, government, or police force for years. That chaotic upbringing sparked a lifelong research question: why do roughly 10 per cent of individuals, companies, and nations emerge stronger from disruption while the rest collapse? That inquiry ultimately led her to pioneer a new management field as Chief Reinvention Officer at the Reinvention Academy. Her path to founding the academy required her own radical reinvention. In 2012, while holding a prestigious position as a Coca-Cola chaired professor at a top executive business school, she attended a conference where global experts concluded that humanity had passed the threshold of preventing major global disruptions. Thinking of her seven-year-old daughter’s future in an uncertain century, Zhexembayeva realised that trying to prevent crisis was a futile effort—the only viable choice was adaptation. She walked away from her comfortable academic professorship to build practical tools for continuous adaptation. For Zhexembayeva, reinvention is no longer an optional, periodic project; it is the fundamental literacy of the modern era. While a 20th-century business model could comfortably run for 75 years without major changes, today's average business model lifecycle has plummeted to just six years. To survive this accelerated pace, she warns leaders against what she terms the "Titanic Syndrome"—the fatal mistake of clinging to past best practices that worked in the past but prove lethal in a transformed context. She compares organisational adaptability to personal hygiene: “If I don't take a shower on a regular basis, I begin to stink. Same with our product, same with our team practices, same with our leadership approaches”. To execute reinvention effectively, Zhexembayeva stresses that leaders must align three core pillars in unison: anticipating change through foresight, designing change through innovation, and implementing change through agile execution. Rather than treating every shift—whether AI, pandemic, or market disruption—as a standalone event, resilient organisations embed a repeatable, well-oiled cycle that continuously refreshes their operations. When reflecting on advice for her younger self, Zhexembayeva notes that human beings are naturally wired for adaptation from infancy. “A baby doesn't need a bonus to start walking,” she observes, encouraging leaders to unlearn the false illusion that stability is safe and change is dangerous. Looking back across her turbulent life and career, her outlook is grounded in resilience and optimism: “It's going to be much worse and much better than you expect... but at the end it will be definitely larger and bigger life than you can possibly imagine”.

Growing up in Andijan, a traditional province in Uzbekistan, Maftuna Akbar learnt early on that women’s reproductive health was a subject spoken about only in silence. Having faced her own gynaecological challenges without adequate information or support, she resolved to change that reality. Having started coding at age 13 and working as a programmer by 17 while studying business administration, Akbar drew on seven years of IT experience to build Femi during her maternity leave—a digital health companion designed for women across every stage of life. In Uzbekistan, where seeking gynaecological care remains taboo and local-language medical resources were historically scarce, Femi fills a critical void. Working alongside local doctors, Akbar translated complex medical articles into clear Uzbek, integrating trackers for periods, pregnancy, postpartum recovery, and menopause alongside discreet online telemedicine consultations. What began as a volunteer-driven initiative earned first place at the President Tech Award, expanding into neighbouring markets as a comprehensive health platform. Transitioning from developer to CEO presented a steep learning curve, particularly when it came to commercialisation. “The most difficult lesson in this journey was selling,” Akbar admits. “I’m a good visionary and I’m a good builder developer, but not a seller. I had to spend time and my nerves to learn how to sell my product”. Relying on daily journals to track her growth, she views entrepreneurship as a continuous catalyst for self-transformation. “Being a founder is realising how stupid you were six months ago every six months,” she reflects. Refusing to let regional stereotypes or self-doubt constrain her ambition, Akbar encourages female founders to reframe their perspective. “Being a female founder is not about the gender,” she emphasises, urging women to focus on the deep empathy and unique insights they bring to solving real-world problems. Driven by a mission to reach women across emerging markets, her commitment remains steadfast: “My biggest success is being crazy enough that I won't stop... I'm still fighting for a society where women [have] access to timely gynaecological care”.

With an academic background in political science and international relations, Aleksandra Simoni seemed set on a traditional, predictable path in academia and corporate marketing. Yet, driven by a creative spark and a desire for personal agency, she left a comfortable role to launch Green Lining, a design and product venture based in Montenegro. Recently named Young Woman Entrepreneur of the Year 2026 at the RCC Western Balkans Women Entrepreneurs Awards, Simoni’s trajectory shows the power of stepping outside prescribed boundaries. Simoni’s decision to pivot into entrepreneurship surprised her colleagues and family, whose views were shaped by generations focused on traditional job stability. But for her, true safety lay in autonomy rather than a predictable routine. “For me safety isn't about like getting the paycheck at the end of the month,” she explains. “For me safety is actually taking control and taking charge of how things will flow”. Building that control required overcoming initial anxieties about fitting in. She fondly recalls showing up to a startup accelerator event expecting an informal gathering, dressed in a summer dress and slippers, only to discover a formal black-tie affair where she was called on stage first to pitch her concept. Stepping up to speak anyway transformed her perspective on risk. “I will survive. It's really not that serious,” she realised. That moment solidified a core piece of advice she shares with aspiring founders: “You don't need to wait for everything to be perfect... You just need to be able to afford to fail”. For Simoni, entrepreneurship is about turning ideas into tangible reality and treating setbacks as valuable feedback rather than defeat. “For me, success is the ability to actually see in person something that you once imagined,” she reflects. As she prepares to scale Green Lining into international markets and explore new techniques like 3D printing on textiles, she credits her growth to lessons passed down by her grandmother Meera. By viewing every challenge as information, Simoni continues to build a resilient, purpose-driven business on her own terms.

Holding a PhD in bioengineering through the joint MIT-Portugal programme, Dr Ivana Kostić spent years between Lisbon and Boston working on cardiac regeneration and cutting-edge health innovation. While she could have pursued a comfortable academic trajectory abroad, she chose to return home to Serbia to build the local biotech ecosystem—co-founding Health Tech Lab to support regional health tech pioneers. Recently, Kostić’s focus has expanded toward a pressing societal challenge: youth mental health. In a region shaped by historical conflicts and systemic disruptions, she observes that younger generations often carry inherited burdens. “We have years of family and ecosystem challenges that were transferred from one generation to another,” she explains. To break that cycle, Health Tech Lab is developing a holistic mental health hub in Serbia, bridging traditional medicine with preventive education, mindfulness, and digital health innovations. Navigating complex multi-continental research, stolen lab data, and delayed timelines taught Kostić to view setbacks through a constructive lens. “Some of the things probably were considered failures, but for me were redirections,” she reflects. That adaptability underpins her approach to startup resilience, where she stresses that technical expertise must be paired with emotional grounding. “It's very important for entrepreneurs... to work on themselves and to have this vertical that is stable,” she advises, warning that unresolved internal stress “creates a lot of dissonance in the world around you and in your business”. For Kostić, female leadership brings a vital edge: honoring intuition alongside hard logic. As she expands Health Tech Lab's footprint across the Western Balkans and prepares her upcoming book, her definition of accomplishment remains rooted in purpose. “When I feel inspired and in peace within myself, that's a success today for me”.

Growing up in Albania, Aneida Bajraktari followed a well-trodden path: earn a degree, secure a stable corporate job, and settle into family life. “I grew up believing that the right path was to study, to find a stable job... because actually that's how families raise kids in Albania,” she reflects on She’s Next. Armed with a background in finance and law, she was thriving as a finance manager for a Swedish NGO when a single weekend event altered her trajectory entirely. Attending a Startup Weekend workshop transformed her perspective on risk and initiative. "I realised entrepreneurs are not like superheroes," she says. "They are ordinary people who decide to solve a problem and just take action". That mindset shift inspired her to found Balkans Capital. After balancing both roles for nearly a year, she took the leap into full-time entrepreneurship, confronting her initial anxieties about leaving a secure salary behind. Looking back, she recognises that traditional corporate stability can be an illusion. "As an entrepreneur you realise there is no ceiling, but there is also no floor," she observes. "That's both the scary and the beautiful part". Today, Bajraktari is not only leading Balkans Capital but also launching Doll'App, a resale app bringing circular fashion to the Western Balkans, while actively building Albania’s start-up ecosystem through mentorship and Startup Grind. Rather than fearing technological disruption, she is actively learning AI and coding to keep her ventures ahead. “The real challenge is not AI replacing entrepreneurs,” she argues. “It’s entrepreneurs who don’t embrace AI being replaced by those who do”. For Bajraktari, modern leadership requires humility and the confidence to admit when you do not have all the answers. "One of the biggest strengths a leader can have is the confidence to say, 'I don't know, let's figure it out together,'" she notes. Across her ventures, she defines ultimate success not by revenue alone, but by personal agency and community impact. “My biggest success is my freedom,” she says—from picking up her three children from school without asking for permission to helping cultivate the region's first tech unicorn.

After leading business development at Billz—one of Uzbekistan’s most prominent tech start-ups—Tashkent-based entrepreneur Natalya Klimenko felt driven to create something of her own. In late 2023, she launched STEMIO, an EdTech platform designed to teach school students STEM subjects and programming. Driven by a desire for meaningful social impact alongside commercial viability, Klimenko stepped into the grueling reality of early-stage entrepreneurship. Building as a solo non-technical founder proved to be a steep learning curve. Navigating rapid market shifts, hiring difficulties, and high marketing costs, Klimenko made two major product pivots before confronting a hard financial truth. In December 2023, she made the conscious decision to shut down the project. “I calculated all my investments and loss cost opportunities. It was more than 70,000 dollars. I could buy one apartment in Tashkent, but still it was really cool experience,” she reflects, choosing to view the closure not as failure, but as an invaluable professional investment. For Klimenko, failure in entrepreneurship is a masterclass in adaptability, emotional intelligence, and rigorous planning. She cautions founders against falling so in love with their product that they ignore unit economics or sales. Her advice to female founders is practical: “Take risks, but of course you should have ABCDE plans if something doesn't work”. Rather than stepping away from innovation, Klimenko took her hard-earned lessons into her next venture. Today, she serves as COO of an AI project delivering intelligent voice assistants for telecom operators across Central Asia, replacing outdated voicemails and filtering spam calls. Reflecting on her journey, Klimenko remains fiercely committed to using technology for good. “We are not a charity—we need to earn money, but at the same time, for me, it was very important to have this social impact,” she says, demonstrating that true entrepreneurial resilience lies in knowing when to pivot, when to let go, and how to build again.

Growing up in a traditional, patriarchal family in Azerbaijan, Turana Alieva faced a pre-written future: her parents dreamt of her becoming a doctor. “I’m afraid of blood,” she recalls, admitting she faints at the sight of it. Refusing to follow their roadmap, she pursued politics and economics instead, eventually securing a scholarship for a master’s degree at the University of Glasgow despite her family’s initial reluctance to let her study abroad. After graduating in the UK, multiple unsuccessful job attempts led Alieva to pivot into entrepreneurship, launching her start-up, FeMight. Building a business from scratch proved draining and misunderstood by her family, who initially assumed she was unemployed. Her mother regularly sent her office job vacancies until FeMight won the UK Start-up Award regional finals. “Until recently my mom thought I was jobless,” she explains, noting how hard it can be for traditional families to grasp the building phase of a start-up. Through coaching female founders, Alieva identified the "confidence gap" as the primary barrier preventing women from taking risks, asking for promotions, or pitching investors. She views confidence not as an innate trait, but as a muscle that requires continuous daily exercise. “Once you stop training it, it goes weak again,” she observes, emphasizing that women often focus on current metrics while men pitch ambitious future projections. Entrepreneurship also taught Alieva hard lessons about pacing. Early on, she attempted to do everything at once, leaving her devastated when no one showed up to her first two events in Glasgow. Realizing she was on the path to burnout, she shifted to setting one focused goal at a time. Today, inspired by the rapid shifts in women's independence across Azerbaijan, Alieva is expanding FeMight’s global community by raising funds through B2B crowdfunding to build a dedicated digital platform for female founders.

At two years old, Bardha Ajvazi moved from Kosovo to the United Kingdom, returning home as a teenager with an open-minded worldview and an international perspective that would define her career. "I think if that didn't happen in my life, I would be a much different person today," she reflects, noting how her early cross-cultural exposure shaped her approach to business. Armed with degrees in business management and IT, Ajvazi co-founded marketing and digital agency Brand Fluence in 2019—just three months before the global pandemic hit. Rather than folding, her team capitalized on the sudden regional surge in demand for digital transformation, e-commerce, and online branding. Driven to address a gap in her local market, she later co-founded Andra, the first Albanian-language platform dedicated to women’s health, menstrual tracking, and family planning, which has already surpassed nearly 30,000 downloads. Across both ventures, Ajvazi has built a leadership style rooted in open communication and strong teamwork. Rejecting the myth of the solitary founder, she actively encourages her team to propose new ideas without fear. "I've learned that I cannot do something on my own," she notes, emphasizing that long-term success requires gathering diverse perspectives around the table. Her guidance for aspiring female entrepreneurs is grounded in practical reality rather than social media illusions. She cautions founders against measuring early-stage startups against mature companies, while advising them not to wait for perfect timing. “Do not wait until you feel completely ready because that will never happen,” she urges, stressing that while passion is vital, “a business also needs demand”. As a mother of two balancing executive roles with board leadership, Ajvazi defines success through meaningful impact rather than single milestones. Looking ahead to her next chapter in digital transformation, AI, and mentoring young women across the Balkans, her commitment remains steadfast. “Success for me is... having created work that is meaningful while remaining present in other important parts of my life,” she says.

At twenty years old, Katarina Tasevski did not have her life figured out. Before settling on a career, she changed university faculties four times, exploring everything from archaeology to biochemistry. Today, as the Operating Director at DEKRA Arbeit Macedonia, she views that winding path not as a delay, but as an essential exercise in curiosity. Tasevski strongly advises young professionals to avoid rushing into master's degrees just to tick an educational box, recommending instead that they wait until they have truly discovered their calling in the workforce. This philosophy of continuous, intentional learning underpins her entire career in North Macedonia's rapidly growing labour market. "I strongly believe that if you are the smartest person in a room, that you're probably in the wrong room," she observes, noting that genuine growth only comes from being challenged. At the helm of a full-service HR company, Tasevski navigates a workforce in flux, balancing the influx of international companies and the shifting priorities of younger, self-focused generations. Yet, amidst the global rush to adopt artificial intelligence and remote work, she remains a staunch defender of in-person collaboration and human intuition. While AI might efficiently draft an email or filter a CV, she argues it cannot replicate empathy, assess a candidate's behavioural nuances, or measure true motivation. "Human interaction is... something that actually puts the human in human resources," she asserts, stating that she would never trust software to do a recruiter's job. For female entrepreneurs building their teams, she advises looking past rigid skill checklists and hiring for motivation, as technical skills can always be taught to a willing learner. As a female executive in a society where the title of "director" still traditionally conjures the image of a man, Tasevski is redefining the role. She believes that modern leadership is not about wielding sheer authority, but about cultivating an environment where employees feel valued, heard, and motivated to grow. For her, a woman's true leadership strength lies in combining "resilience with empathy". Despite the pressures of running a broad HR operation that she fondly compares to being in a "popcorn machine", Tasevski’s enthusiasm is boundless. When asked what she wishes for the most, her answer is wonderfully unconventional: an eighth day of the week—specifically, an extra working day—just so she can dive into even more projects.

At 21, Sitara Aghayeva made a life-altering decision: she secretly taught herself the programming language Python in her bedroom. Despite holding a degree in accounting and facing intense pressure from her family to pursue a safe, traditional financial career, she deliberately chose the harder path. Today, the Baku native is a leading AI risk specialist at a major bank and the CEO of her own tech start-up, Comask. Aghayeva’s pivot into the tech world was fuelled by a military philosophy she read in a book: you must choose your hardship. She now applies that same pragmatic mindset to entrepreneurship. Her start-up, Comask, was born from a frustrating corporate pain point: losing valuable ideas during late-night WhatsApp brainstorming sessions. Her solution integrates task management directly into a messaging platform, converting chat keywords into actionable workflow tickets so no tasks are lost before the team reaches the office. Crucially, Comask features an AI "agile coach" that learns a team's work style, monitors workflows, and proactively messages delayed team members in multiple languages to offer help. Yet, Aghayeva remains highly critical of the tech industry’s current blind obsession with artificial intelligence. “First thing a start-up... should identify is the problem,” she advises, warning founders not to integrate AI simply to appease investors or follow the hype. If a problem can be solved with a simple two lines of Python code, she argues, that is the superior solution. As a professional who manages AI ethics and data privacy, Aghayeva's rule for daily AI use is strict: “If you think that if someone screams out about your information to the public and you will feel ashamed, don't share it with ChatGPT, Claude, or any other tool because it can leak”. In Azerbaijan, where success is often rigidly defined as a 9-to-five job with a monthly pay slip, Aghayeva is challenging the status quo. She actively pushes back against regional stereotypes that claim coding isn't suitable for women. Her advice to the next generation of female founders is to abandon the pursuit of perfection and simply take action. “Just release, push, write someone on LinkedIn... speak about your startup. It won't be perfect,” she urges. "If you go public, you take good comments and bad comments, and you should take both".

For over two decades, Nadera Alsukkar managed complex operations in some of the world's most volatile conflict zones. Born during the outbreak of the Bosnian war to a Bosnian and Jordanian family, she experienced displacement firsthand, igniting a lifelong passion for human rights. Armed with a degree in actuarial science and early experience volunteering with the Red Cross, she carved a unique path leading crisis responses in Syria and Iraq.Her crucible in leadership came while managing the White Helmets operations for Mayday Rescue, culminating in a highly complex, internationally celebrated evacuation of her team under severe military and diplomatic threat. Through these high-stakes environments, Alsukkar discovered that true leadership isn't about rigid planning, but understanding how to keep a team focused when forced to pivot under immense pressure. She also realised that calculating risk in a crisis requires looking beyond immediate relief to consider long-term sustainability and values. Despite her formidable resume, Alsukkar has intimately navigated the hurdles women face when seeking professional support. She recalls a male colleague dismissing her operational vision by telling her, “you plan like a Barbie”. This ingrained bias, combined with the internalised pressure women feel to have all the answers, makes asking for help incredibly daunting. “We're either we think we're not allowed to ask because we should know the answer, or we're not taken seriously,” she notes. Determined to change this, Alsukkar recently founded We Lead Next, a platform designed to democratise access to expertise and mentorship for young founders in the Balkans and the Middle East. She argues that the corporate world is still clinging to post-industrial management theories built for predictable manufacturing, which are entirely ill-equipped for an era dominated by rapid AI advancements and global uncertainty. Her start-up aims to gather experts in fields like fintech, deep AI, and biotech to build entirely new, community-driven ways of doing business.Reflecting on her demanding career and the reality of burnout, her advice to female entrepreneurs is surprisingly gentle. "Take it lightly," she urges, emphasising the importance of prioritising yourself and leaning into supportive communities. "Change happen one small effect after another, not dramatically. So slow down that's the most important thing".

At just 20 years old, journalism student Gayane Arakelyan was handed a daunting task: translate an English article about "cloud computing" into Armenian. She knew nothing about technology, but she accepted the challenge anyway. That single translation connected her with international diasporan entrepreneurs and laid the groundwork for Digital Pomegranate, which has grown into the largest tech company outside of Armenia’s capital, Yerevan. Rather than following the traditional route to the capital, Arakelyan and her co-founders deliberately established their headquarters in her native Gyumri, Armenia's second city. To overcome the challenge of finding local talent, they launched a campaign to draw workers away from the capital's traffic and air pollution, offering a better lifestyle and remote work benefits. "If it was an easy path, everyone would already be there," she reflects. Since taking over as CEO in 2018, Arakelyan has steered the company from a contract software shop into a product development firm. Their latest venture, idea boxes.app, is currently launching in Japan, where they are actively looking to partner with 50 female founders. Through a revenue-share model, Digital Pomegranate provides the "tech muscle" to build complex business apps, allowing women to focus entirely on their industry expertise and market development. Navigating the tech world as a non-engineer, Arakelyan relies heavily on her leadership skills to create an empowering environment for her team. She notes that while Armenia’s IT sector enjoys a rare 50/50 gender split, self-doubt remains the biggest hurdle for female entrepreneurs. Following a life-changing leadership program in the United States, she realised her own missing link. "I was trying to be as equal as possible, trying to focus more on hard work," she says, before discovering that simply having confidence in her abilities was enough. Today, Arakelyan considers her greatest success to be the harmony she has found between her demanding international career and her family life with two young children. Her ultimate advice for women navigating the high-stress tech industry is to surround themselves with a supportive community and refuse to quit. “We just need to keep going," she urges. "Because when we stop, it makes a lot of things stop”.

For 25 years, Dorina Lluka Davies built a successful career in Kosovo’s civil society, shaping policy and empowering youth. Yet, her most recent venture began not in an executive office, but in her parents’ garage, wrestling with a power drill and discarded car tyres. The pivot came during the quiet reflection of the pandemic. Pregnant with twins, Davies found herself confronting a profound question: “what kind of world are we going to leave to the children”? She explored recycling but discovered it often releases toxic chemicals, calling it “the best of the worst”. Instead, she turned to upcycling—the safest way to extend a product's life—and founded her startup, Simply Green. In Kosovo, where roughly two million used tyres end up as massive land pollutants, Davies saw an untapped resource for furniture. She spent a year learning to build seats from scratch, strictly designing them so they wouldn't look like old tyres and trigger local stigmas around second-hand goods. As she navigated this new sector, she uncovered a stark gender disparity: out of nearly 800 active furniture businesses in Kosovo, only three or four were owned by women. Davies views this gap through a strict economic lens. “If women don't contribute, you actually are having less money,” she argues, noting that women also bring vital creativity and detail-oriented innovation to design. For Davies, being underestimated is powerful fuel. “If someone says to me I cannot do [something], that's the wrong thing to say to me because I will do everything... to approve that I can,” she says. “I don't like people putting me on the box”. Having survived the Kosovo war at age 14, Davies understands resilience. She approaches business challenges like the "fourth rose" in a parable, which, when pruned by a gardener, doesn't cry out in victimhood but instead asks, “I wonder what lesson is trying to teach me”. It's a creative mindset she urges all female entrepreneurs to embrace when facing setbacks.

“I always stand as the only woman at the pictures of, let's say, 10 or 13 CEOs of regional exchanges,” observes Ivana Gažić, President of the Management Board at the Zagreb Stock Exchange. Speaking on the latest episode of She’s Next Talks, her tone is not one of defeat, but of pragmatic resolve. Gažić's ascent in the financial sector mirrors the economic evolution of her own country. Entering university as Croatia transitioned from socialism to capitalism in the early 1990s, she deliberately chose finance simply because it was reputed to be the most demanding field. "I was very interested in statistics and explaining to myself the world through numbers," she recalls. Armed with a modern economic education and fluent English, she started in the exchange office of a London-listed Croatian firm and methodically climbed the ranks of investment banking, eventually taking the helm of the Zagreb Stock Exchange in 2011. Over two decades in the industry, Gažić has witnessed the stubborn inertia of male-dominated boardrooms. Early in her career, she opposed gender quotas, assuming the market would naturally balance the scales. Twenty years later, observing no organic improvement, her stance has shifted. She notes that intervention isn't just about fairness, but about sound financial strategy. “Regulators have noticed that increasing the number of women on boards has decreased the risk profile of companies,” she points out, adding that diversity forces firms to act more prudently during times of crisis.At the Zagreb Stock Exchange, Gažić has intentionally cultivated a distinctly different corporate environment. She flatly rejects the aggressive, "screaming" management styles that have long plagued the financial industry. Instead, she champions a leadership model that checks egos at the door and values collaboration. Crucially, she actively discourages her female colleagues from mimicking male behaviour just to survive in the room. “I am always pointing out my female traits,” she says. “I don't think that's anything to be ashamed of; I think actually it's an advantage”. Today, three of the four directors on her core management team are women, though she notes she often has to invest significant time in encouraging female talent to accept promotions they might otherwise second-guess. Despite her executive success, Gažić is remarkably candid about the cultural headwinds women still face in emerging Europe. She points out a frustrating paradox in Croatia’s workforce: while 61 per cent of university graduates are female, intense societal pressure still pushes women toward traditional domestic roles. "If they are working a lot and they have high management positions, then everybody is actually somehow judging them," she says, noting that this harsh judgment often comes from other women. To combat this, she argues, the business world needs more male advocates—particularly those in power who recognise the systemic unfairness when their own highly educated daughters enter the workforce. When asked what advice she would give her younger self, Gažić is wonderfully practical: seek out "gender-agnostic" bosses who only care about the quality of your output, and find the courage to argue your case earlier in your career. As for her own trajectory, Gažić remains entirely captivated by the pulse of the markets. Having recently led the Zagreb exchange through a period of regional acquisitions, she thrives on the industry's relentless evolution. “The problems we were dealing with when I joined, they are long overgrown,” she reflects. “I will stay in the stock exchange business for sure”

“I am a seasoned project manager with 20 years of progressive working experience,” says Jamilya Yusupova, a business development consultant based in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, in the latest episode of She’s Next Talks, empowered by Visa. Her journey spans health, education, and rural development—but her heart lies in agriculture.  “Tajikistan is a rural country,” she explains. “I’m passionate about creating long-term value to the community and environment.” That passion led her to develop a mobile app and e-trade platform, now used by more than 200,000 farmers across Central Asia. “It’s applicable in all Central Asian countries, including Russian speakers.” Jamilya’s career began in 1995 as a junior accountant, but she quickly pivoted from finance to development. “I find out for me it's boring to continue this accounting procedures from time to time,” she recalls. Her move into private sector development eventually led her to mentor women-led businesses across Tajikistan—from robotics and aquaculture to greenhouses and agritech. She names the barriers clearly: “For me, actually, it was ageism and sexism.” Even now, she says, “when you become professional... most of the private sector, they don't trust.” But change is underway. “I was surprised when I found out that we have mining companies led by women.” Jamilya currently mentors three successful women entrepreneurs—and sees a common thread in their journeys: “Most of them are scaring for failure. I think they have to believe in themselves. They need to trust their skills and judgments.” Access to finance and ownership remains a challenge, but mindset is where she starts. “Learning is one of the key issues for women entrepreneurs.” To Jamilya, entrepreneurship requires grit, patience, and adaptability. “By taking patience, he motivates others... by patience, I think you can just destroy the rocks.” She sees adaptability as essential—especially in uncertain times. “You don’t have to panic. You have to believe in yourself that you are able to manage.” Her most memorable risk? Launching a cross-border platform for Tajik and Kyrgyz farmers. “Of course it was calculated, and I believe in my intuition,” she says. The result: a digital hub that outlived donor-funded projects and still serves thousands. Looking back, she credits her former managers, colleagues—and family—as mentors. “My great-grandfather was the first teacher in Dushanbe,” she shares. “I think it’s important when you have such examples from a person who already has expertise and he just shows you the way.” Her advice to her 20-year-old self is simple: “Trust, learn, and appreciate what you have... appreciate the people whom you met... appreciate the task which you gave.” And to young women starting out today: “Every challenge you face is an opportunity to grow.”