Voices from the top: Sheikha Intisar Alsabah, Kuwaiti social entrepreneur

2021 has been a year full of challenges and opportunities, and definitely full of changes. Nothing has been steady, everything has been flowing.

In 2020, we were taken by surprise and had to react and adapt quickly. For instance, my Intisar Foundation team had to pivot overnight to start offering our drama therapy sessions online when the Covid-19 lockdowns were announced.

In 2021, however, the world has been slowly but hesitantly coming back to life, and therefore, I believe that we have all had a choice of either going with the flow or staying stagnant. My teams at Intisars, Ebbarra, Alnowair, Bareec, and Intisar Foundation have focused on the latter and continued working hard.

I expect that all the plans that we have made in 2021 will come to fruition in 2022, but I do not expect the challenges to be as many as they have been in 2021. I am looking forward to seeing my teams at Alnowair and Bareec doing their programmes in schools and offices, or the Intisar Foundation team resuming its in-person drama therapy sessions in refugee camps across Lebanon and Jordan.

However, I also hope that we will preserve the good lessons from 2020, such as occasionally working from home and having online conversations instead of running from one in-person meeting to another.

Therefore, I do not expect the flow in 2022 to be as fast as it has been throughout 2021. I expect 2022 to be more steady and calm, because 2021 has been so explosive. On a personal level, the only challenge I have ever had to overcome has been my own perception of who I am, where I should be, what my mission is, and what my goal in life is/or should be. So, the challenge used to be about learning that I could allow myself to be more, do more, and grow more. Everything that was outside of me has only been aligned with what I thought of myself first.

For that reason, my social enterprises Intisars and Ebbarra Jewelry equip women with daily reminders and tools for self-empowerment, because we need to work on ourselves daily. So, I have always been working on me and the rest then followed.

Honestly, my main advice for women leaders is to work on their inner beliefs and on themselves, because the outside world is just a reflection of what we have inside. Therefore, the more we feel deserving, the more we will get from the world.

I find that every time I grow more internally, the world simply explodes with the opportunities that it has for me.