Pakistani Businesswoman Mentored by Xerox Chief Executive
Farah Agha gains management insights from Xerox's Anne Mulcahy
By Afzal Khan
Washington File Special Correspondent
Washington -- Farah Agha, a Pakistani businesswoman, has completed a mentoring program with Anne Mulcahy, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Xerox, one of the world's largest document-management companies.
Agha, 29, the CEO of her family-owned Abbas Spinning and Weaving Mills in Karachi, Pakistan, said the training and guidance she received from Mulcahy have encouraged her to help more Pakistani women seek business careers.
A program sponsored by the U.S. State Department brought together Mulcahy and Agha, whose business is reported to be the largest open-end spinning operation of its kind in Pakistan. It employs 450, many of whom are contractual workers.
Agha said what impressed her most about her stay in the United States May 1-24 was the "down-to-earth" informality of Americans. She said that in the United States even people in positions of power act perfectly "normal and courteous" and do not put on airs while talking to others holding lesser positions. In Pakistan, she said, social status often limits communication with others.
The "humility" she found in the United States was very apparent in her mentor Mulcahy, Agha said.
"I traveled with her side by side for four hours in her private executive jet to Portland, Oregon, to visit a Xerox branch. After that, we went out together to shop for shoes," she said.
The 52-year-old chief of Xerox Corporation, based in Stamford, Connecticut, was ranked second among Fortune magazine's list of 50 most powerful women in U.S. business in 2005. The magazine annually compiles lists of female business leaders in the United States and female business leaders in the rest of the world.
Agha is among 17 women from 14 countries to participate in the first round of a new U.S. State Department partnership with Fortune's Most Powerful Women, a program announced by Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs Dina Habib Powell in November 2005.
This first Fortune/State Department International Women Leaders Mentoring Partnership program, which began on May 1 and ended on May 24, offered mentoring to emerging women business leaders around the world. A Washington-based organization, Vital Voices Global Partnership, is coordinating the program, while Meridian International Center, another Washington-based group, is administering it.
VISITS TO WHITE HOUSE, STATE DEPARTMENT, CONGRESS
During their first week in Washington, the group met with first lady Laura Bush and female assistants to President Bush. At a roundtable discussion at the State Department, the group also met with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Karen Hughes, Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky, Dina Habib Powell, and other female under secretaries and assistant secretaries.
In addition, the participants visited Congress, where they held discussions with senators Hillary Clinton and Kay Bailey Hutchinson, and the U.S. Department of Labor where they met Secretary Elaine Chao.
Agha said it was "a treat" to meet with all these "powerful women" in the U.S. government, and described Laura Bush as the perfect "poised and gracious first lady."
In her three-week mentorship at Xerox, Agha sat in meetings conducted at the highest level by Mulcahy. She recalls sitting in on a simulated crisis meeting that was held to "pre-empt and plan a course of action" in the event that a Xerox employee is kidnapped in Latin America.
"Pre-empting problems by anticipating them in advance is sorely lacking in Pakistani business culture which only knows how to react to an event," she said.
Agha also was impressed by the "highly documented and systematic" business environment at Xerox. She said her exposure to such business-management practices in the United States will stand her in good stead when she returns to Pakistan.
Because she is the only female executive heading a spinning mill in Pakistan, Agha said, it will take time to bring more women into the industry. She now employs only three women at the "management level" in her company, one of whom is her personal assistant.
Agha explained that the largest group of women working in Pakistan's extensive textile industry is employed in the garment sector, followed by the weaving sector, then the spinning sector.
"It is an up-hill task, because Pakistani women tend not to take degrees in engineering and technical fields," Agha said.
She holds two master’s degrees in business administration -- one in finance, the other in marketing -- from the private Greenwich University in Karachi. As an undergraduate, she spent 18 months studying international management in Franklin College, Lugano, Switzerland, which is a four-year, U.S.-accredited liberal arts college.
Agha is a traditional Muslim woman who wears a hijab or head-cover, a practice common in Arab countries but relatively rare among educated women in Pakistan. Agha believes strongly that wearing the hijab makes her more comfortable in working with male colleagues in the business world.
"I have worn the hijab since I was 14 years old. My mother and two younger sisters don't wear it," she said.
Agha said she fervently hopes that her career, which has been enhanced by her visit to the United States, will help demonstrate that a traditional Muslim woman can compete on equal terms with male colleagues, just as in the Western world.
Additional information on the program is available on the State Department Web site.
More information about Vital Voices and the Meridian International Center is available on those organizations’ Web site.
Created: 25 May 2006 Updated: 25 May 2006
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