AUTHOR I SPEAKER I FOUNDER
Hi, I'm MM
Hi, I'm MM
Growing up, I used to watch The Oprah Show, and I would say to myself, “One day, I will sit on that yellow chair to share my extraordinary story.” I must have been 10 years old.
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When Oprah announced the end of her talk show, I wasn’t discouraged. I wasn’t sad or disappointed. I was sure (I am sure) I would somehow, one day, be sitting on that yellow chair.
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Oprah would ask me: “What do you want to be remembered for?
And I would say: “My story.”
Oprah I can’t wait to meet you and tell you all about that little girl and the voices she has been unmuting and the stories she has been uncovering.
I am a former #bosslady in stilettos. I spent my 20s and 30s traveling the world and working for Fortune 500 companies, including IBM, Intel, and McKinsey, making great things happen.
Now, in my 40’s, I make great people happen.
I’m a best-selling author, TEDx speaker, founder, and researcher in female leadership, with a Doctorate focused on mothers in leadership to build mother-inclusive communities, workplaces, and systems, one mother, one story, and one policy at a time.
Originally Armenian, I was born in Lebanon and moved to Dubai at age 18. Over the next 15 years, I excelled in highly competitive, fast-growing industries, working with IBM, Intel, and McKinsey to develop product, market, and customer strategies to drive organizational change. By age 28, I was leading the communications strategy for a $240 million M&A and managing the corporate communications for a $34 billion IPO.
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However, becoming a mother proved to be my biggest challenge yet, because suddenly I was asked to justify why I deserved the role I had been doing so well for the past 15 years. This led me on a journey to reassess my identity stripped of job and title. In 2018, I began documenting her journey to define who I am regardless of what I do.
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I hold two master's degrees: an MBA from the University of Roehampton, UK, in Female Leadership, an MPhil from UCAM in Diversity and Inclusion in Leadership, and a Doctorate in Female Leadership.
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In 2021, I published my first book, That Suburbia Lady, a satirical memoir exploring the authenticity of choices, voices, and dreams. The book was added to the Mohammed Bin Rashid Library catalog in 2022. In 2023, I was a featured rising local author at the Emirates Literature Festival and delivered my TEDx talk on the seasonality of life, the power of personal stories, and how they shape our identities.
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In 2023, I started my doctoral research to identify how companies can attract, recruit, retain, and support mothers to leadership roles. What started as research quickly became a mission: to shift the leadership narrative from mother-friendly to mother-inclusive, because #WomenLeadWhenMothersLead.
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In 2024, I founded The UNMUTE Project, a community-powered storytelling platform amplifying real, unfiltered, #BraveNewVoices because every story deserves a stage. Through live events, a quarterly journal, a post-season magazine, a book club, a story hub, workshops, and a partnership with Emirates Literature Festival, we have created a full ecosystem, from the stage to the page, where every brave new voice finds her home.
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In 2026, I received my Doctorate, having developed the Mother-Inclusive Leadership (MIL) Model™, a research-based framework designed to help organizations and institutions address systemic barriers affecting women’s leadership retention and advancement.
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Through my research, writing, and speaking, I'm on a mission to build a platform for the voices the world most needs to hear and reshape conversations around inclusion, leadership, and authenticity, one story at a time.
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