- Latinwo Olugbenga. O
Our Mentorship Session With Amal Hassan - How It All Went Down!
Who is Amal Hassan?
Amal Hassan is a visionary tech entrepreneur and CEO of Outsource Global. Her primary goal is to make Nigeria the leading Business Process Outsourcing destination in the world.
She started Outsource Global in 2016, which has since risen fast to become a global giant in the BPO Industry, achieving its 5-year plan within one year of commencing operations and with no sign of slowing down anytime soon.
She is very passionate about empowering women and youth, mainly through the creation of jobs and harnessing their creative potentials. This is very evident as her company currently employs over 850 qualified staff, with room for 5000 more by the year 2025. With clients from across continents, particularly in the US, UK and Japan, it is safe to say that Amal is making good on her primary goal of not only putting Nigeria on the industry map but dominating it as well.
Amal is one of the 16 Women Business Leaders named among the 2018 Fortune by the U.S Department of State Global Women’s Mentoring Partnership. She is a partner at Bluetag Group, Parkway Projects and Health Station.
Initially wanting to become a Medical Doctor, a twist of fate ensured she went into Business Education instead, graduating with a B. Sc. and M. Sc. In Business Administration from Bayero University, Kano.
She’s an inspiring example of what women can achieve despite their cultural and religious backgrounds, as she has become a successful and renowned entrepreneur in a field in which there are very few women.
Purpose of Visit
The meet and greet mentorship and networking session was a 2-hour intensive and interactive session focused on impact areas of different start-ups and its representatives in attendance and how they can scale and make their Businesses better through lessons learnt from Amal’s entrepreneurial Journey.
Of course, the Unshackled team was inundated with the excitement of Amal creating time out of her tight schedule to impact positively on start-ups and young entrepreneurs. The session commenced as scheduled with the opening remarks and presentation from Hassan Dantata, the CEO of Raven & Macaw and Host of the event. He walked us through Raven & Macaw’s impact areas and services - as “ultimate provider of Creative and Intelligent Marketing and Websites solutions to the UK Optical Industry”. He further gave an insight into the company’s global clients and its CSR activities under R&M Foundation where they plan to train and up-skill young and vibrant local talents into the world of Digital Marketing and Web Development.
Then came a presentation from Murtala Baba, the newly Elected Curator of the Global Shapers Community Hub Kano. GSC was born out of the World Economic Forum to create a network of inspiring young people under the age of 30 working together to address local, regional and global challenges. With more than 7,000 members, the Global Shapers Community spans 376 city-based hubs in 156 countries. He walked us through impact areas in Kano-Nigeria which span through the following:
“STEAM Internship program in partnership with Steamledge Limited, to bridging the skills gap and improving employability amongst Nigerian graduates
Warawa Water Project was carried out in partnership with Natview Foundation for Technology and Innovation (NFTI) with the provision of water whilst infusing technology to collect high-resolution ethical data that tries to infer the impact of water to our local communities
Blood drive campaign to commemorate the World Blood Donor Day which is held on the 14th of June every year.
The CEO of Startup Kano (Aisha Tofa), gave a brief insight into their impact-driven hub. A modern company that promotes and advocates technology, entrepreneurship, Agribusiness and Self-employment. She further communicated how her business incubates and accelerates startups and trains them on strategies to secure funding from venture capitalists, angel investors and government grants.
As we closed into the zenith of the mentorship session, Ahmad Idris, CEO of Steamledge Limited gave an insight into its impact areas and entrepreneurial journey in the Education and Technology sector for the past 3 years. Providing early access to Technology skill set to students in primary and secondary schools as creators of technology. He also gave evident video testimonies from students enrolled in their partner schools and their Global Technology Acceleration Program. He more-so talked on their future AI products and Projects in the pipeline.
The session steered next to an enriching Teezer from the Unshackled Podcast Hosts, (Hassan, Ben and Ahmad). This was a 10-minute insight into the main objectives of the podcasts - reaching out to Young entrepreneurs and working professionals by giving our daily entrepreneurial experiences as well as from industry leaders as Amal.
The session got more refreshing with a late afternoon Tea break and munchies. This catalyzed networking and brief conversations, all within 15 minutes.
Amal was next to share her experiences which the audience was eager to learn from, the whole room was quiet while she powered deep into her entrepreneurial journey. An introduction filled with how she started as a Technology Training Business in the city of Kano, Nigeria. As she pointed out her dissatisfaction about the impact she was making doing certification training, she started researching on making a more positive impact in the society through Business Process Outsource, how can she create employment and as well provide services that meet operational standards of different global companies in different cities?
She gave insight on how Outsource Global was born after 8-years of failing many times, picking up the pieces and starting all over again moving through different cities. The processes that refined her to be an admired leader were the keynotes for aspiring entrepreneurs. Here are 8 key takeaways as below:
Challenges and Failure is a constant in business, it's actually the process of becoming a leader (Amal says there was no time she wanted to give up)
Importance of thorough research in making important decisions in a new business area
Importance of Integrity in accessing local and global partnerships
Always engage consultant and experts in areas you don't have expertise in
Build processes and standards to meet clients needs and expectation
Have core values that each employee imbibes
Make decisions based on what the Data says: (Data does not lie)
Make sure you create Performance Improvement Plans for your employees
The 8-Key takeaways as above are the inferences drawn from the mentorship session and Question/Answer session
There were lots of Questions lined up after a thought-provoking session with Amal.
The event has been a mentorship time that will change the way we see the world, the way we run our businesses and how much do you want to impact.
We are looking forward to having Amal Hassan as one of our first set of guests lined up to feature on the Unshackled podcast. Be sure to subscribe and sign up to our newsletter.