Episode 33: Nancy Hoque
“I learned to do really great work, so people didn’t focus on my perceived identity. It was all about the work and the quality of my work. I learned to connect with people and to speak in the same language as them, especially as a woman in a male dominated area.”
"Speak up."
Nancy Hoque,
Engineer and Product Marketing Manager, on learning to stand out in a male dominated career
Nancy Hoque is a multipotentialite, as she is a woman of many different interests and creative pursuits in life. Nancy was a solutions engineer, designing and aiding the sales of mission critical communications for the Federal Government and Department of Defense (DOD) space, she was the founder of a modest fashion scarf ecommerce business, sixteenR scarves, and she is pursuing a Masters of Business at the prestigious Hass School of Business in Berkeley, California where she co-founded “Strong Women Strong Minds”, an initiative to help rebuild the broken lives of women in conflict zones.
This is all the while being a mom to two young boys and working in a career in product marketing at a leading Bay Area tech company. Nancy is a badass!
Podcast Details
Find out from the podcast how Nancy:
- Got into the STEM field which led her to the difficult path of career path of electrical engineering
- Dealt with being the lone woman in a room full of men and how she held her own
- Developed a thick skin to stereotypes and the one superpower that she defaults to
- Learned to speak up to harassment in the workplace
- Saw a business opportunity, launched the ‘sixteenr scarves’ company and outfitted Olympian bronze medalist Ibtihaj Muhammad in her signature flag scarf
- Believes in the importance of having supportive partners as a launch pad for success
“It’s really important to speak up right away to harassment and to shut it down, it’s not ok. You’re not doing anyone favors by being quiet.”- Nancy Hoque
About Nancy
Nancy Hoque is a MBA student at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business and a Product Marketing Manager at Symantec. She is an advocate for gender equity through Lean In, holding leadership roles in Women In Leadership and The Bay Area Bangladeshi Association. A former solutions architect designing mission critical communications for the U.S. military, and founder of sixteenR scarves, a modest scarf empowerment brand, she sought an MBA to prepare her to inspire and lead social impact. Her most recent initiative is co-founding "Strong Women Strong Minds". https://www.strongwomenstrongminds.org/
Nancy resides in Northern California along with her husband and two children.