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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.