Clair Deevy joined Facebook in 2015 and is director of community affairs for Asia Pacific. She is focused on community engagement, women’s empowerment, data for good and creating partnerships to create opportunities for positive social impact. In 2014, she was appointed as an ambassador for women in technology for UN Women in Singapore. She recently visited Pakistan to launch an initiative by Facebook, SheMeansBusiness.

Dawn caught up with her to talk about the economic empowerment of women.

Q: What drew you to working for women empowerment?

A: I have this passion for women’s economic empowerment. I have done a lot of work with UN Women in getting women into technology and helping then uncover their potential. My parents ran a small convenience store and I worked with them from a very young age. So, in terms of a role model for me, seeing my mother work in a small business was my life. As I grew older, I realised that wasn’t a universal experience and that put me on a certain path.

When I was quite young, I remember having a conversation with my mother, who was earlier a nurse. When I found out that she had been to nursing school, the only thing she said was that she should have been a doctor, which I thought was an interesting thing to say and asked why. She said nobody told me that I could so it never occurred to me that I had the option. That stuck with me.

Q: What brings to Pakistan and how has your experience here been?

A: I have been working for Facebook for three years but I have been working in the Asia Pacific for the past 12 years. I am originally from Australia but moved up with my previous employer, Microsoft where I was mostly head of corporate social responsibility for the region. I had worked in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and India. This is my first visit to Pakistan.

We launched SheMeansBusiness on International Women’s Day in 2016 in three countries in Asia Pacific and now we have brought the program to Pakistan. The SheMeansBusiness partnership with Universal Services Fund will reach 80 cities and 8,000 women annually across Pakistan, delivering digital skills training with a focus on small business development and online safety.

One of the reasons we came to Pakistan was that I got a call from a women entrepreneur from here who had heard about the program and seen it online and traced it back to me. She said we need to bring this to Pakistan for two reasons.

The first so that more women can benefit from it and two, we need to work on breaking the stereotype outside Pakistan of what a Pakistani woman can do.

In terms of similarities, I see the hunger and interest for women to start their own business. Every country has its own cultural nuances in terms of how accessible things are. What I find quite specific here is this ability to work around to put things together and find what they can do or sell.

Q: What is the vision?

A: Having worked across non-profit, government and companies, I feel I can have the greatest impact working for a company that cares enough about the issues to want to do something about it and have the resources and reach.

Women entrepreneurs come in so many different shapes and sizes. When I started thinking about this I realized nearly everyone I spoke to could identify a woman entrepreneur of some scale. The vision is that more women think of starting their own businesses as they invest in their communities and families and that has a ripple effect, taking on a life of its own.

Published in Dawn, October 18th, 2018

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