Introducing Mouna Aouri Langendorf, from Tunisia, Founder, of Woomentum
Tunisia, January 2011. Violence had erupted across the country after the self-immolation of a young boy, setting in motion the Arab Spring.
In a house on a quiet hillside, a young mother cradled her three-day-old baby, keeping away from the low French windows that overlooked the streets, listening warily to gunshots outside. The neighbourhood watch had cordoned off the house to keep the family safe.
The woman, a civil engineer entrepreneur, was also worried about her clients who were working with the government on large deals—a government that was now defunct with an absconding dictator, following a rather bloody coup d’état.
It changed the world as we knew it and it transformed Tunisia, a picturesque African country with strong European influences. And in unfathomable ways, it changed the life of Mouna Aouri Langendorf forever. After the tumultuous events of the revolution, Mouna left her country of birth.
“We were hiding with my new born child. Some malicious groups were attacking private homes and looting shops. There were gunshots around the corner. It was a highly stressful first week for us as parents,” she says. Little wonder then, that when Mouna’s German husband got a job offer from Singapore, they moved countries in less than three months.
Working her way past the emotional challenges, Mouna started rebuilding her career. An innovative and enterprising woman, she started work on an affordable housing product, which could be built in just a week and last over 30 years. But as she readied herself for the pilot project, she realised she was pregnant again. “It was a knock-out punch! I had just completed a visit to Guangzhou and brought this project together with Cambodian micro-finance institutions. And I had to shelve everything.”
But this time she was more prepared to take it on. She studied for a business degree while carrying her second child and headed out to explore opportunities soon after the little one was about six months old. “Becoming a mum humbled me and changed me forever. It was brutal and I don’t think it had to be that way. For instance, becoming a father wasn’t such a challenging experience for my husband. He was travelling and flourishing in his career. So, having children had essentially made him more complete. I think it completed me as well, but that came much later, when things started falling into place. Until then, it was a destabilising phase.”
After her own extremely tough and emotional experience, Mouna identified the need to change the ecosystem for women leaders. And that’s how Woomentum was born.
While there were networking meetings, coffee catch-ups, panel discussions, events and summits (and more strength to them!), she believed that an online forum is still missing. “With women juggling so many things, I think it is tough to always meet in person. So, I wanted to create a safe place online where they could go.”
Woomentum was created to provide a platform for women to browse through and learn about building a business, find advice from mentors, get coaching, or raise funds. It is an avenue for successful women entrepreneurs to provide advice to other professionals and develop mentor-mentee relationships.
“Women don’t pitch enough and that is a big problem. At accelerators and incubators, one mostly sees men. Women feel shy or out of place. It is shocking that only 4 percent of venture capitalists’ money goes to women-led start-ups!”
Mouna is doing all she can to change it, drawing from her experiences of often being the only woman civil engineer in a room full of boys and men. “I want to build a digital community for women. Women don’t network over Friday beers. They have different needs and ways of seeking help and funds. I want to make it easier for women to innovate.”
About Sushmita Mohapatra
Sometimes all you need to hear is a good story. A story that shows it can be done.’
An expat life is complicated in its simplicity. I walked into it with blinkered vision, unaware of the emotional turmoil, the immense amount of self-doubt and apprehensions that would confront me every single day. Vulnerable one day, confident the next. Nothing had prepared me for life away from the comfort zone that I grew up in.
A working woman, a trailing spouse, a new mother—some roles were new, others seemed to have changed the rules of the game. The most heartening thing was that there was immense support in the ecosystem. Most people I met, went out of their way to help, making time for coffee, conversations and connections.
There were two things that stood out. One was the comfort of knowing that so many had gone through similar struggles and emerged with impactful success stories. And the second was the warm approach that people had to change here. Even today, it continues to surprise me that things can change so much overnight. Favourite stores and playrooms shut down, people leave, friends come in, new bonds are built and some are maintained over social media. To be all encompassing in your acceptance to anything thrown your way, is pretty much the mantra of survival.
Every single day, a new person stands at the threshold of life that I was at. And I wanted to do my bit and help.
So I wrote. It had to be about stories that I knew how to write, and about real heroes, because they inspired me. In some way, it also had to be about changing a much-misconstrued narrative around expat life being all about pristine beach holidays, shopping trips and spa vacations.
‘Dear Ms Expat’ is an attempt to reach out to every woman who faces a curveball she hadn’t planned for, in a land far, far away.
About Savitha Venugopal
It has been almost four years since I moved out of my home country. I came as a ‘trailing spouse’, both reluctant and excited at the same time. Reluctant because I was leaving behind a career and heading for uncertainty; excited for all the obvious reasons – a new place, that too a global city like Singapore, and all the wonderful possibilities it presented.
But no matter where you are, a journalist remains a journalist. You see potential stories everywhere. Especially so when you are in a new place, looking at it from a fresh perspective. As someone who has always been an active participant in the discussion on women’s issues, it was but natural that I was drawn towards the lives of women here. Expat women in particular, who had come into Singapore much the same as I had.
Just the stories of friends and neighbours were eye-opening as to how resourceful and enterprising women can be when taken out of their comfort zones. Where it was difficult to find jobs, they used their skills to teach, volunteer or set up small businesses. Where they found opportunities, they adapted and reinvented themselves. They let their passion lead them, they found new interests. There is, in short, no holding them back.
And once you’ve had a taste of these stories, you look for more and you find the more impactful ones – both exhilarating and heart wrenching. The world is full of such moving and inspiring tales waiting to be told. For me, Dear Ms Expat is but a beginning; a first step in giving voice to women’s stories.
Dear Ms Expat ISBN: 9789814779005 U.P: S$19.96 with GST - a heartening collection of 10 diverse real-life stories of accomplished expat women in Singapore who reinvent themselves to become entrepreneurs, advocates, writers, leaders while juggling successful careers alongside families and motherhood in a new environment.
