Women and Governance: key elements of good leadership

Nesrine Zemirli, PDG Fondatrice de SCiiĜO

by Nicolas Sacchetti

In an era of great technological change, companies taking the digital turn require a trusted leader. 

 Nesrine Zemirli is the CEO and Founder of SCiiĜO, a company that specializes in developing customized end-to-end solutions and artificial intelligence (AI) strategies. It was as a female CEO in the high-tech field that she spoke at the Webinar on Women's Governance and Leadership in Innovation Ecosystems.

Event presented by 4POINT0 in the framework of the first International Conference on Policies, Processes and Practices for Performance of Innovation Ecosystems (P4IE), May 11-13, 2021.

Nesrine Zemirli comes from the AI field. Her career path has been through fundamental research in universities and companies. This journey led her to create SCiiĜO: "We help companies create unique, customizable, simple and practical solutions that support their growth, improve their expertise, and automate some of their processes."

She founded SCiiĜO with the intention of creating an innovation structure that puts humans at the center of AI approaches. For the CEO, leadership is about personality. Everyone has their own way of being, but there are key elements to a good leader such as communication, inclusion, and keeping people at the center of considerations. This last point is critical, given the ultimate goal of technology to be useful to people.

Audacity

Creativity and expertise combination allow creating concrete innovations that will change our reality. Nesrine Zemirli agrees with Danielle Lafond (Labplas) when she talks about breaking down the tasks of a goal that seems out of reach at first glance: "You can think big, but start small. Set achievable and attainable goals. You can dream of the world, but you must also give yourself the means to build it and build on a solid foundation."

Key Factors of Good Governance

For SCiiĜO's founding CEO, leadership is reflected in the company's values and culture. As far as SCiiĜO is concerned, she names authenticity and ethics, stating the importance of ethics while working with AI. Nesrine Zémirli also prioritizes EDI (equity - diversity - inclusion). She adds that building on talent and collective knowledge from the exchange between clients, collaborators and staff, leads to excellence and expertise. 

A good leader has the ability to mentor, support and unite teams around a vision. - Nesrine Zemirli, CEO & Founder, SCiiĜO

Creating an Environment of Co-creation and Holistic Innovation

Nesrine Zemirli notes the trends towards agile and human leadership in companies. It’s on this perspective that she sees a gender distinction in women's leadership:

"As women, and this is my point of view, we’re fairly more equipped to be agile and human. Since our youth, we’re constantly reconciling, adapting, managing priorities and weighing pros and cons of our actions. It's not easy enough to be a woman every day, so in a corporate and high-tech environment, the challenge is even greater."

This multi-factor management allows her to see an issue from every angle. Fellow speakers Sâadia Lakehal, Maria DiRosa, Danielle Lafond, Lahou Keita, and Louise Guay all nodded in agreement as Nesrine Zemirli specify this gender distinction about women's leadership.

Once the problem has been analyzed, we can prioritize, break down the problem, and set up an approach that allows us to work according to the objectives to be reached. 

Listening and communicating

Those are other fundamental points of good leadership. She emphasizes that by paying attention to people around and by remaining open to the world of possibilities, we can find inspiration. She also believes that women's intuition and emotional intelligence are more keenly developed than men's: "Being more sensitive allows us to detect hidden signals."

Creating a Trustworthy Environment

New technologies carry a spectrum of radical changes in society. For Nesrine Zemirli, creating a trustworthy environment is necessary to help staff acquire the required skills that come with the digital turn. Also, for the CEO and Founder of SCiiĜO, trust allows the space needed to express creatively without being restricted by hierarchy or elements that stop staff from performing. 

"We must not create our own limits, our glass ceiling. For every challenge, there is a solution. If there isn't one, we can create it. I tell myself that we need resilience, perseverance, and audacity. You can't limit yourself to what society expects of you as a woman. We have a place. Whether it's on the moon or in a mine, a woman is capable because she has that ability to be resilient, passionate, and create extraordinary things." - Nesrine Zemirli, CEO and Founder of SCiiĜO

This content has been updated on 2022-10-06 at 18 h 56 min.