I’ve been lucky in my current role with Cisco Systems to get to work in the beautiful city of Amman, Jordan, for the past year and a half, and to say that I have fallen in love with the country and its people would be an understatement. Having the opportunity to work with people there in the technical field, specifically engineering, and seeing both the positive increase in the hiring of females in these engineering roles, while at the same time hearing of ongoing challenges and pushback these women get from family, friends, and colleagues of having taken on a very “male-oriented” educational and career path, inspired me to propose to launch our first-ever Greenlight for Girls Day event not only in Amman, Jordan, but the first-ever in the Middle East region!

I’ve been fortunate to build a very excited, qualified and motivated onsite project team in Amman to help me plan our G4G Day event, which will be taking place on Saturday, September 13th, and they are three ladies (Rana, Wasan & Ro’ya) all having studied different forms of Engineering and currently today in roles such as Project Manager, Team Manager and Team Lead Support Engineer.

I have always been welcomed with open arms when I travel and work in Jordan, and I wanted to give something back to their amazing community and, hopefully, inspire and encourage the girls there to consider STEM-related fields of study in the future, and to show them what amazing and fun opportunities may come their way when they do.

As Brigham Young was quoted, “You educate a man; you educate a man. You educate a woman; you educate a generation.” Our goal is to make a difference for the girls in Jordan and to see the sparkle in their eyes at our upcoming event, when they’ll be meeting other girls their age from different schools, while working and playing “hands-on” in the workshops, while listening to female role models speaking about their experiences and success in different STEM-related fields. Getting different local and global sponsors in Jordan to be part of this exciting event, to partner with us in making the G4G day event not only a success, but a recurring event, year after year, has been fun so far and we look forward to growing the list.

Launching G4G in Jordan is just a small way to say “Thank you” to the amazing hospitality and kindness I experience when travelling and working in Jordan, and I hope that it can go a long way and inspire girls, year after year, to think “outside of the box” when it comes to their future studies and career plans. The sky is the limit!