Dr. Hynd Bouhia, Founder and CEO, BAL Method Ltd; Fmr Advisor, Prime Minister of Morocco
Dr. Hynd Bouhia is the founder and CEO of BAL Method, an organization on a mission to empower women. She has been the managing director of the Casablanca Stock Exchange. Dr. Bouhia has also served as an advisor to the PM of Morocco.
Podcast
Overview
Living in the 21st century, we have come a long way in achieving women’s equality in domestic life as well as in the workspace. However, it is important to remember we are still in the process and have still not reached there. Even today, there are millions of girls from across the globe who for varied reasons do not have access to education. Mindsets of the powerful in the corporate world still question the need of giving equal salaries to male and female employees.
If today, we are fortunate to be surrounded by people who believe in equal opportunities, it becomes our onus to use our abilities to empower other women around us. Our today’s guest, who hails from a patriarchal background, broke all rules to achieve her dream of an impressive career. Today, she is busy in her mission to empower millions of other women to step up and be financially free.
About Dr. Hynd Bouhia
Dr. Hynd Bouhia is the founder and CEO of BAL Method, an organization on a mission to empower women. She has been the managing director of the Casablanca Stock Exchange. Dr. Bouhia has also served as an advisor to the PM of Morocco. She has authored a book titled, “African Girl, African Woman”. Tune in to listen to her inspiring journey and how she is on a mission to inspire millions like her.
Discussion
Dr. Bouhia talks about her inspiring journey as she handled several diverse roles in her career before starting BAL Method. She talks about her teenage days when girls were generally married at an early age. Wanting to pave the way for others, she got admission to an engineering school in France. She narrates how her professors had to convince her parents to move to France. From, there, she managed to get admission into Harvard in Environmental Engineering and Sustainable Development.
Dr. Bouhia from Harvard moved on to work in the World Bank, followed by becoming an advisor to the PM of Morocco.
BAL METHOD
Dr. Bouhia defines BAL as, “belief, act, and lead.” She says, “It is a method I created to help women power up, to find strength and belief in a dream, mission, and life they wanted to design.”
She founded BAL to follow her mission “to empower a billion girls and women around the world to grow confident, resilient, tech-savvy, and financially free.”
She talks about her journey as a woman in the corporate world. Dr. Bouhia reveals how she had to prove herself at every step because she was a woman. She recalls one of such days when she returned home frustrated from work and looked at her two daughters. She says, “It was then I realized I had to walk on the path of my mission. They helped me power up.:
Dr. Bouhia elaborates on the key components of her mission, talking about the importance of being tech-savvy and financially free.
Women Equality
Dr. Bouhia blames imbalanced treatment between men and women on culture, though agrees that things are eventually changing. She talks of the imbalance based on salary disparities and partial opportunities.
She says, “We are seeing the reforms. Changing habits take a lot of time, and we are getting there.”
Book: African Girl, African Woman
Dr. Bouhia wrote the book as she shifted her work to embrace her mission to empower women. She calls it an encyclopedia for every girl and young woman out there. The book is full of inspiring case studies of resilient women from different fields. Her book is available on Amazon at https://www.amazon.in/African-Girl-Africa-Woman-tech-savvy/dp/B08ZBJR4LB
She attempted it as she feels sad to see and read about girls getting married before 18 or being forced to drop out of school. She ends the conversation as she says, “Everyone has to be a star of her movie and that is what my work is about.”
Profile
Dr. Hynd Bouhia has cumulated more than 20 years of professional experience in high-level leadership positions in strategy and finance. She was nominated by Forbes among the 100 most influential women and most influential Arab women in Business (2015) and honored as a member of the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars (2018).
With a Harvard Ph.D., and an Engineering degree from Centrale Paris, Dr. Hynd started her career at the World Bank in Washington working on development projects before joining Morocco’s Prime Minister as an economic advisor. Dr. Hynd was appointed the Managing Director of the Casablanca Stock Exchange and structured several investment funds before launching the consulting firm Strategica.
