Viewing profile — ilianam

Thanks so much for the shout out! We believe that the concept of "undiscovered talent" should be eliminated globally - and that this region in particular has been overlooked for to…

Yup! In Palestine 52% of CS students are women. In Tunisia 62%. In Qatar 80%. This is one of the main reasons Laila and I decided to launch Manara. :) Our 5th cohort (the one after…

How did you bomb that first internship? I wonder if there's a useful lesson to share here with Dalia and our broader community.

Moving to the United States is almost impossible for junior engineers from the Middle East. They can relocate to Europe quite easily though. Dalia is going to relocate to Germany o…

Love this! I'm Manara's co-founder and CEO. One of the things we hear from people like Dalia is how much they LOVE getting mock interviews & mentorship from people who work at Goog…

Thanks so much for sharing this perspective! I'm Manara's Co-Founder and CEO. I wish that we could tackle all these communities at once because you're right - there's undiscovered …

Manara's Polish-American co-founder catching up late here to say I never tried that ice cream, but I do recommend eating knafeh in the West Bank and fattet hummus in Gaza! The food…

Hi all, jumping in here as the CEO and co-founder of Manara just to say that all the Palestinians that Repl.it interviewed came from Manara (I think). We have in place a very inten…

Love your handle :)

Laila has been in back-to-back calls since she posted this (thanks to everyone who filled out the form & booked a meeting with her!) so I'll share what I know on this topic. The hi…

Gotcha. Sounds like an interesting life. :)

Thanks for sharing that. It is indeed really hard - and as startup founders, we understand! Just wanted to clarify that many of our engineers do want to work on startups with inter…

This is reassuring, thank you! Also probably clarifies why we hadn't heard of him. :)

This is reassuring, thank you!

Oh got it, didn't realize you were in Dubai. Makes sense now! We've been happy to see a growing community of strong tech companies & startups there (e.g., Noon, Careem, Ziina) and …

What do you mean about going full gigs? Does that mean that the contracts that their engineers are working on now are no longer full-time engagements? We'd love to learn anything w…

That's interesting. I'm half Polish and I know that there is a perspective that women do really well in science/STEM, but I don't think I've seen them participate at equal rates as…

Thanks so much for sharing that! Glad you're having such a great experience on our volunteer team. We couldn't do this without people like you.

Thanks so much for your interest in helping! The best way to get involved is to visit https://www.manara.tech/get-involved . Can you also share that link with your friends in North…

Thank you so much! We'd love to connect more to the Tunisian software engineering community. Will send you an email.

Yes, there’s a growing trend of connecting tech companies to untraditional talent, including in emerging markets. This is for good reasons: talent is everywhere, there’s a growing …

Thanks for flagging them - hadn't heard of them previously.

This is what Manara candidates often have experienced too, even when they're excellent. It can be very hard to get the attention of tech companies if you're applying from a country…