Thought leader and CEO of AI company Affectiva Rana el Kaliouby gave a keynote at the Arch Summit. She spoke to Silicon Luxembourg about distilling her experiences as a muslim, Middle Eastern tech entrepreneur into her book Girl Decoded.
Why did you want to write this book?
Initially the idea of this book was going to be focused on my field of expertise, Artificial emotional intelligence. I really wanted people to see what the future is going to look like and have a voice on how we shape it. But I met with a Penguin Random house editor over lunch, he said ‘we’ve so many AI books, we probably won’t take this one. What’s your story?’
I told him I grew up in Egypt, studied in the UK and then at MIT, and then started my own company. He was like ‘that’s the story we want to showcase!’ There are so many misconceptions about what it means to be a muslim woman from the Middle East. And that became the thrust of the book, telling my personal story.
What was it like writing it? Did it bring up memories of challenges you had buried?
It was a very therapeutic self reflective exercise. My mum read an early draft of the book and she was horrified. Because I talk very openly and vulnerably about my childhood, how I was married and got divorced. I told her I made a commitment to write openly and vulnerably and I think that paid off. A lot of the people I talk to relate to the challenges.
I was always in the news celebrating one thing or another, I wanted people to go behind the scenes and see the struggles and trade offs I had to make. I had to make a lot of trade offs around my family. I moved to the US from Egypt alone with two young kids. Both my family and my ex’s family were like ‘you’re going to fail, these kids will be miserable!’ I had a lot of fear at the time. I talk about how I overcame some of that.
You’re a successful CEO in an industry that’s not known for being inclusive. Tell us about how you succeeded?
I’m very passionate about human centric AI but also bringing diversity, equity and inclusion to the tech space. I’m a tech CEO, I raised venture funding when I ran my company, and only 3% of all venture funding goes to women.
How did you do it?
A lot of perseverance and also if you’re credible and a domain expert, that carries a lot of weight. But it wasn’t easy. Our first investor was a Swedish investor. They really believed in our mission. One of our key learnings is funding isn’t just about the money. You want people around the table who really believe in your vision, who believe in you. These guys stuck with us. They invested in 2009 and supported us through the last 12 or so years. We’re so grateful to them.
What is next for you?
So now I’m an investor and make it a point to find and support women founded companies in particular. I have an early stage seed fund, a small fund targeting $15m. We’ve done 10 investments so far. Half are in women-led or women-founded companies, which is hard in the AI space, there’s not a lot of us. I want to make sure I’m paying it forward.
If you could distill some good inclusive practices you’ve seen, what would they be?
If you’re in a position to invest, definitely make it a point to support under-represented founders and ideas. If in your company, you are in a position to hire, for example, be intentional about hiring practices and be demanding. For many years I’d get resumés from middle-aged engineering men. And it wasn’t until we said, ‘we need to see more women in the pipeline’ that we asked that of our recruiters.
The final thing, even though my company is women-founded, it’s still male dominated. If we sit around the table and a male cuts a woman off, I would stop the meeting and say ‘I want to hear what Gabi has to say. Hey Gabi, what were you saying?’ Or give credit to women. Just these tiny practices or habits can add up.
