Phyllis Brings Her HR Skills to Rwanda

My last blog from Rwanda

2009-04-03T16:16:00.017+02:00

Reflecting on my time in Rwanda, I would have to say the most gratifying part of my visit here has been the growth in self-awareness of the women and their management styles as a result of the Human Resources Management workshop. Even the one who ran in and out of the training a million times to take and make phone calls told me in a follow-up visit that she now gets it – her employees are important, they represent her business and she wouldn’t want to be treated the way she treats them – “barking orders at them like a policeman!.” That apparently is the boss’ way in Rwanda.

The leitmotif of the workshop was “Catch your employee doing something right,” the idea being to praise employees so they’ll continue doing what they do well. I think the women liked the idea but it is not an especially promoted management practice in the country. The idea of saying “thank you” to the employee does not seem to be a natural part of the culture of the workplace here.

The Customer Service Workshop that another Bpeace member delivered both this year and last, has had great resonance with the Associates (our women) and their staff. Remarkably, what is called Customer Care in this country has its own department in the government – it is considered a critical government initiative.

A woman I met yesterday is a fast-talking charming dynamo named Bea (above), who is head of Customer Care for a large bank here, BCR. I had heard that she did free workshops on Customer Care which is why I wanted to meet with her. Once Bea heard what we were trying to do, she agreed to meet with our women for free once a month, or however often we wanted, to reinforce the training they had already had. This is one of the things I really like about this country and is strikingly different from our own, much more self-absorbed, materialistic society. People reach out and give unselfishly all the time – it is definitely a positive, inspiring characteristic.

With the two women who own hair salons, Harriett and Jeanne, (above) we talked about having customers make regular appointments so they can make sure they see their favorite stylist. This would be a big change; women now walk in and see who’s available, kind of like the old barbershop in the States. Jeanne, in concert with Sylvie, the amusement park owner, is planning to open a beauty school to train hair stylists in Kigali.

There is a big demand for what we call hair salons and they call saloons in Rwanda and most stylists come in from other countries, like Kenya, to take these jobs in Rwanda. Jeanne and Sylvie want to develop home-grown stylists. The Young Professional group in Bpeace has adopted this project and threw a terrific fundraiser in NY for the beauty school here a few weeks ago. This school is really going to happen and if you’d like to help, check out our website on the school: http://www.rwandabeautyschool.org/

The picture you see here is of me and Speciose, pointing to the land she just bought where she is determined to build a hotel, conference center, reception halls and a restaurant ; this is in addition to the flower store and party event company she has which I mentioned in the first blog. (A total aside: Calla lilies are grown here and cost about $0.25 each, that’s right, 25 cents!)

Solina (above) continued to report to work to the Ministry of Health as an anesthesiology nurse during the genocide even though she had lost her parents and four of her sisters in the violence. The work was very arduous and strenuous since the hospital was completely understaffed. In 1998 she resigned to open a nursery and landscape business, a beloved hobby which she developed into an ongoing operation. Solina and husband have three children and adopted three orphans after the genocide, as many, many families did. When we met, we drew up a job description for a business development person who would work on commission to gain more landscaping and maintenance contracts from corporations for her landscaping and nursery business.

Francoise (above) operates three related businesses – a restaurant (above), which does very well because it’s attached to a bus depot, party supply and catering. The name of Francoise’s restaurant, Amahoro, means peace, but the signage is not easily seen. So the big idea, as they say in advertising, is for Francoise to attract more customers into her restaurant by improving the signage and even putting a sign out by the sidewalk, where there isn’t one now; Francoise’s restaurant is way back from the street behind the bus depot. So she has new signage she wants to put up with a new logo that Bpeace helped to develop. However, she is concerned that her current customers won’t think she is still attached to the business because the sign is somewhat different even though the name of the restaurant is the same. She has had the new signage for 2 years and hasn’t yet put it up because of this quandary. So we talked about her putting up the new signage next to the old, leaving it there for 6 months so her customers could get used to it, and then taking down the old signage. She liked the idea. We will see.

All these women I’ve been writing about graduate from the Bpeace three-year program in May and we hope to continue to support them on a local basis with a local volunteer network and occasional support from NY.

Some final thoughts and observations:

Like most other sane people I ridiculed Madonna/Angelina/Mia Farrow for doing these seemingly noblesse oblige adoptions in Africa. But I have to admit I now get it. I had a strong desire wash over me at a few points in my stay to adopt an orphan and take him or her home with me. Strong enough that I looked up adoption procedures on the net for Rwanda. The country prefers couples under 35 years of age but will occasionally stretch to 50. So that was that. I think Elliot was relieved…

The last Saturday of every month is national clean-up day. Everyone must go out and help clean up their neighborhood. It is a policy all who I talked to support since they like seeing their cities clean. And it is strictly enforced. If you get in your car and go out before 11 a.m., you are stopped and fined unless you have a really good reason. Your attendance is noted by the local district leader. Some citizens do sleep in, others send their maids and houseboys to do the clean up work, but most people do participate.

Our assistant program manager in Kigali, Susan, is considering other opportunities since her contract is up with Bpeace and we have had to cut costs in Rwanda until the fundraising environment improves. When I told her in the course of another conversation what nannies make here in the NYC metro area as live-ins, she was stunned and eager to explore that kind of job here for a year or so. Susan is college-educated, speaks, thinks, reads and writes in English. Trust me, this is a Rwandan Mary Poppins! I’m going to connect her to nanny employment agencies, but if you know anyone… You can check her out on the Bpeace video that’s at the bottom of all these blogs.

And finally, finally, I am so glad I went. What can I say? Enriching, inspiring and so much more. I would do this again in a heartbeat for Bpeace or any NGO. You, dear friends and family, took a chance in supporting me and I hope I haven’t let you down. I don’t want to keep blabbing about how much your support—both financial and moral—has meant, but I can’t stop. And don’t worry – no more personal appeals again!

Happy Passover and Easter,
Phyllis

Never again only if we make it so

2009-03-26T19:51:00.002+02:00

The main genocide memorial in Kigali.

The genocide in 1994 when 800,000 – 1, 000, 000 were killed in 100 days in Rwanda is, in my opinion, still the Main Event although Rwandans are reserved and don’t talk about it much. There is life before and life after. Every government initiative I read about, and there are many, are all forward-looking but have their roots in the genocide and the determination to heal from it and not let it happen again. The slogan here is Never Again, as it was for the Jews after WWII. I guess the cynical message here is never say never.

I visited 2 memorials, one of them the national one here in Kigali, the capital. It gives a good history of the genocide and events leading up to it, and also includes exhibits about the other genocides in the 20th century. The brutality is overwhelming. I started to describe it to Elliott and he told me to stop, it’s unbearable, which it is. At the end of the exhibit, there are about 10 blown up pictures of kids from 9 mos. to 12 years with simple identifying statements about them – favorite food, games, etc. One was – Last statement before he died – Mum, where do I run?

The other memorial is a church in which hundreds of people had been told was a refuge but were killed by the extremist militia once gathered within. All the pews, which are long wooden benches, are piled up with the clothes they were wearing that day, in their memory. It is very haunting and very moving. Richard, the BPeace program manager in Rwanda, and I talk a lot about the genocide and current politics and our conversations have given me insights and information that make this experience that much more.

I think that’s why working with these women entrepreneurs is so rewarding. Like everyone in this country they have been touched by the genocide, many of our women in the closest way possible, yet they not only exist, they are building for the future with hope and optimism. All the women I’ve met with over the last few days I’m meeting with again so I will update you on those meetings after they’re concluded.

Another project I stumbled upon while reading about Rwanda on the Net ( http://www.agahozo-shalom.org/) is a youth village for orphans of the genocide called Agahozo-Shalom, modeled on the youth villages established in Israel for orphans after the Holocaust. The philosophy is specifically geared to traumatized youth. It is an effort between the Joint Distribution Committee, the founder, who is an American philanthropist, the Rwandan Dept. of Education and an educational institute in Israel. It is an astonishing endeavor and I encourage you to visit the website.

I went to visit this village with Susan, the BPeace program assistant and my interpreter for my time here. Agahozo-Shalom, agahozo meaning “dried tears, shalom meaning “peace”, is about one and one-half hours from Kigali, one-half hour down a rutted dirt road. When we went, it was in the afternoon rain and of course we got lost and it became a 2 ½ trip. I was almost ready to turn back when we spotted the village, and it was completely worth that bumpy, muddy trip. The construction of the village was started in the fall and they’re almost done. There are already 125 kids living there and there are plans for expansion to 500-750. The kids live in small houses with a house mother, an older Rwandan woman, and a counselor, who is younger. What the house mother does is mother, get the kids up in the morning, off to school, etc. At night, from 9-10, there is family hour with the mother and the counselor where they sit and chat and review the day. In the morning after the kids are gone the house mother then has English and computer lessons. All the teachers, who are Rwandan, were taken to Israel for 2 months for training in the educational philosophy. The school in the village is away from the houses, up on a hill, because they want the kids to walk to school to make the demarcation between school and family clear. The teachers do not live in the village, for the same reason. Every detail has been thought through. The homes are simple but beautifully designed. The village is wireless. They have a farm where they’re growing all their fruits and vegetables so they can be as self-sustaining as possible. And for sustaining itself financially over the long haul so this doesn’t become just an interesting experiment, they’re creating a water-processing plant for coffee, building visitor lodges (they’re almost done), and on and on.

The director is an Israeli, Nir Lahav, who has managed a miracle in getting the houses up and the kids there and in school so quickly. He’s one of these guys who has a million ideas – and gets them done. There is sufficient staff including 10 volunteers, 5 from the U.S., and 5 from Israel. It’s a one-year stint for a post-college person. Airfare and a small stipend is paid. We met a few of the volunteers and they love it. Everyone does, including the contracted-out Rwandan construction crew. The spirit of the place dances in the air. If you know someone in their 20’s who might want to volunteer for a year (from Dec. to Dec.), send them to the website.

To close on a light note: as we’re traveling back from the youth village, we are passing through very rural parts of Rwanda and the kids are shouting out with mischievous fun – muzungu! That’s the word for white person in at least East Africa, if not the whole of sub-Sahara Africa. I have to say I nearly laughed the whole way back to the hotel. And to remind me of those kids, I bought my sons-in-law t-shirts with MUZUNGU printed on the front.

Food for Thought

2009-03-23T17:16:00.004+02:00

Many have asked - how is the food? It’s a lot of carbohydrates – potatoes, rice, which are very good, vegetables and proteins which are overcooked or dried out to my taste, and either too bland or spicy. Until another guest at the hotel told me to order fish brochette, which is off the menu and I didn’t know about, the only thing I was ordering was spaghetti if I eat here. Funny enough, this fish brochette is moist and delicious and all the other fish on the menu is very dry. I find that to be true at some of the other restaurants. My first really good tasty meal came at Sylvie’s, the woman who runs the amusement park. I’m managing and it’s fine – except I made a huge mistake and drank the water and it was Montezuma’s revenge in Rwanda.

The Rwandan water is not drinkable and everyone boils their water before drinking it and washing their fruit and vegetables. The hotel has a sign in the bathroom saying the water doesn’t meet World Health Organizations standards so just drink the bottled water. I pride myself on being a seasoned traveler in developing countries and am a fanatic about brushing my teeth with bottled water, not eating salad, eating fruit you can open yourself, etc. HOWEVER, the other night I got up in the middle of the night and drank almost a full glass of water from the tap before I realized what I was doing. (2 bottles of water were right there but I was half-conscious). So I was out of commission Thursday afternoon, rallied for appointments on Friday but had to miss a Friday afternoon event – the college graduation of Evas, one of our translators, which everyone else was going to and I was so sorry to miss. It’s Sunday night now and I’m fine, in fact, I was able to get to a few genocide memorials over the weekend. More about them later.

I was able to reschedule the one appointment I missed, so since I last blogged I’ve visited with 3 more of our Associates, Languida, Console and Pascasie.

Languida lost her husband, brother, cousins and 15 of her in-laws; they were killed. Her house was completely destroyed. She had been separated from her children during this period but reunited with them afterwards and went back to the tailoring she had been doing. In 2003 she started the funeral home business. It’s not really a home, it’s more of a small store where the flower arrangements are made and a few coffins are kept. People are buried as soon after death as possible so her business is in supplying the coffin, the flowers for the church and transporting the body from the hospital to the church to the cemetery. She felt everything in the HR workshop was important and we re-worked her job description for a front-desk manager and reviewed how to interview.

Phyllis and dairy bar owner Console.

Console is one of 5 survivors in her family of 48 – her parents, all 8 brothers and 36 of their children were killed and their property was destroyed. She survived with her 2 children, her elder sister and one nephew, and rebuilt the small dairy business she and her husband had built. In 2006 she started a party supply business both of which she is trying to expand. She’s now keeping a file on each employee, has employees signing in and out each day (she has problems with lateness and absenteeism), and says she has started praising her people as well as correcting them. The management style here tends to be more command and control and emphasizing positive feedback is a real shift.

Pascasie and her husband and 3 children fled the country and escaped the violence but when they returned everything they had was destroyed. Bascasie has built a successful beer distribution business where she has represented the Bralirwa brand at international shows. Bralirwa is consolidating distributors which means someone like Bracasie had to build a bigger warehouse or she could not be one of their distributors. And she’s doing it – the structure is up and on its way to completion. It’s amazing and so is she. She says that without Bpeace she would not be where she is, from the laptop which all the women received, to Richard insistently beating down the doors of the brewery to tell them they had to support a woman who wanted a larger distributorship. We talked about the turnover of drivers the business was experiencing and considered different ways to attach them to her company through recognition, some teambuilding and a career path. Actually, one of her largest problems is from what I understand typically African – her relatives think she owes them jobs, and not the driver or loader jobs – that’s beneath them. She now has 4 relatives working for her. She can’t say no to them so we strategized different ways of handling it – “just say no” doesn’t work in this culture. People help support their families and it is expected and in many cases demanded.

There’s more to write but I think I’m going to call it a day and send what I wanted to say now in the next blog. In case you’re interested and have the time, here’s a link to a new article in FastCompany on Rwanda and how the president , Kagame, is trying to brand it with wealthy business people in the West. http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/134/special-report-rwanda-rising.html?page=0%2C0

To those who have emailed me and left comments on my blog, thank you, I love hearing from you. And to all of you, your support has meant the world. You have supported an effort that is much more personal than the usual donation to a cause and I think about that responsibility all the time and it informs everything I’m doing here.

The little engine that could

2009-03-19T21:52:00.003+02:00

With Sylvie (left) and Susan at Sylvie's amusement park.

Lunch with Sylive.

In no particular order:

I love the comments on the blog! I didn’t think I was lonely but the comments make me feel more connected. So while I don’t respond to the comments individually I do get this warm, fuzzy kumbaya feeling when I read them.

Everyone here, as might be expected, was thrilled when Obama won the election. The big joke is that every Kenyan claims he is a cousin to Obama (Kenya borders Rwanda and there are a lot of Kenyans in Rwanda) and will visit him at the White House when they pay a visit to America. When Obama does visit Kenya, they will have to close down the country. You may remember Bush visited Rwanda a few years ago in support of his Aids initiative, I believe. They closed down Kigali while he was here for a few hours because of security reasons.

Rwanda reminds me of The Little Engine That Could, chugging with determination up that hill. The country has so many problems to solve, not the least of which is healing in the aftermath of the genocide which was only 15 years ago. There is only a Rwandan identity now, whereas before people had to identify as Hutu or Tutsi. 800,000 to 1 million killed in 100 days in 1994. The country is very poor with a population of 10 million, with 60% living below the poverty line, and few natural resources.

The orphan population is 1.2 million (over 10%!) It is a young population with a median age of 18; 42% of the population is between 0-14, and only 2.7% are over 65.
60% of the teachers in the country were either killed in 1994 or fled the country. As of now, 50% of high school teachers are underqualified.They are investing heavily in education to produce a more skilled labor force but it will take time.

The country needs to draw much more foreign investment in order to grow its economy, but that will happen in a bigger way once it stabilizes its power grid – electricity on demand all the time still isn’t happening and the lights often go off.
However, there is much to recommend Rwanda:

It has the lowest crime rate in Africa. Over 50% of the parliament is female and women occupy many senior positions in the government. Rwanda keeps pushing gender equality and has made it a major government program.

Yesterday morning Susan (Bpeace program assistant and translator) and I visited Sylvie, a Bpeace Associate, at her place of business on the outskirts of Kigali--a most astonishing complex of an amusement park, a restaurant, a large catering hall, conference center and beautiful gardens. And Sylvie has ambitious plans to expand even further. Here’s a link to a brief article on her – she was honored by an international association for amusement parks.

The long road approaching the amusement park is unpaved as are many streets and roads in Rwanda and unpassable when it rains, so she will lose restaurant business during the rain because she can’t afford to pave the road.

We were served a delicious lunch outdoors and talked about how to establish HR processes in her business, like performance appraisals; it’s implementation that’s the challenge.
In the afternoon I met with Symphrose and one of her managers who started with a hotel in Butare and has recently opened a hotel in Kigali, both businesses going well. We discussed HR problems typical the world over – how do you keep a good employee loyal and happy? Why hire this candidate over another one, a discussion she and her manager are having.

Tomorrow, 2 or 3 more consultations.

In closing, if you want to read a book about the Genocide, Shake Hands With the Devil, written by Romeo Dallaire, the head of the UN Peacekeeping mission during that period, is considered very comprehensive. General Dellaire had a breakdown after the war and returning to Canada because of his horror at what happened and what he considered his inability to get the UN to intervene in a forceful way. I’m reading the book now and can recommend it.

A more personal account is Left to Tell by Immaculee Ilibagiza, whose story was also told in a PBS special. She and 8 other women were hidden in a small bathroom for 3 months – and could not move. It’s an incredible story of how faith got her through the most harrowing circumstances.

Turning on the HR light

2009-03-18T15:41:00.000+02:00

Today is the morning after Tuesday’s all-day training center with 10 Bpeace women Associates at a conference center in Kilgali. In the 3 years these entrepreneurs have been under Bpeace's wing, they have received training in finance, marketing and customer service training. There are many other support services Bpeace volunteers provide to the women as well, traveling abroad for 2 weeks to a month, for example, to help a woman with her landscaping business.

Yesterday morning we spent on interviewing skills, starting with the purpose of the job description and how you devise one. The women were able to see that the job description begins to set the expectations for work performance if the candidate is hired. We went through an exercise where we looked at jobs they had and really broke them down into responsibilities of the job, skills, and qualifications required for the job. This was a real eye opener for the group. They truly got the fact that no one really likes writing a job description, but how it makes you think what skill you really need for the job. They each wrote a description for a job they had open. One of the translators will translate it into English and when we have the one-on-one with her, we will review her job description.

Now imagine doing this training, stopping every 3-4 sentences so the translator can translate the English into Kinyarwanda, the local language. Everything takes twice as long so I had to cut out a few sections during the day which I will follow up with each Associate in our one-to-one meetings over the course of the 2 weeks. Did I mention the conference room was dimly lit with maybe a 60 watt bulb hanging from the ceiling? Totally unlike myself, I went with the flow.

We did a role play so the group could see whether the interviewer was conducting the interview according to the guidelines.

The feedback on the morning part of the session was that they learned to interview in a private room or spot, to treat a candidate respectfully even if you have no intention of hiring him or her, go through the resume, or what they call a c.v. thoroughly, finding out the likes and dislikes of each job, reasons for moving to a new job, and strengths and areas for improvement as perveived from previous bosses. The afternoon we spent mainly on setting expectations and objectives, coaching, giving feedback, solving performance problems and summarizing the year’s performance with a performance appraisal – giving them a real performance management model. Solving performance problems were there greatest concern and we spent quite a bit of time laying out a structure on how to handle professionally. I believed that was well received.

Craig Baker is here in Rwanda the same time I am. One of our Associates, Languida, owns a funeral home, and Bpeace wanted to find a business mentor for her. Bpeace put a notice in a national funeral home newsletter asking for a volunteer, and Craig Baker from a rural part of Pennsylvania replied. Craig is spending every day with Languida reviewing her practices, visiting the morgues and cemetaries, and is introducing new ways of handling bodies, keeping to Rwandan customs, introducing marketing materials, like mourning cards, and training her in family-oriented grief procedures. They’re also exploring ways to expand the business since Languida is the only funeral home in town.

In the photo above, Craig is on the right, with Languida (left) and Richard, Bpeace's program manager in Kigail. Craig played center in college but says that in today’s college basketball games, considering the new physiques and the physicality of the game, he would be more a small guard. He’s about 6’6”.

I was pretty tired at the end of the day and just hung out at the hotel afterwards after preparing for the next day with the Rwanda Bpeace staff. But the night before Craig and I went to one of the highly rated restaurants in Kigali, called Republika. Solange opened the restaurant after she returned to the country after the Genocide. The restaurant is exactly what you’d expect a beautiful African restaurant to look like, and the owner, Solange, doesn’t disappoint either with her hospitality and charm.

I’m off to Slyvie’s amusement park. Will report back tomorrow. I’m not really lonely. The days are very, very busy and at night I’m preparing for the next day and skyping with my family.

My kind of weather

2009-03-17T15:37:00.000+02:00

I arrived safe and sound and was so happy to find out that Kigali (capital of Rwanda) has my favorite climate - in the 80's during the day with little humidity, and in the 60's at night; so far so good. Rwanda is a developing economy whose biggest industries are tourism (those adorable mountain gorillas - and, conversely, the genocide memorials) and coffee and tea. The women I am training today have small and medium-sized businesses of all different kinds, a funeral parlor, an amusement park, beauty salons, a florist with a full-service supply party company, landscaper and more.

There is one woman, Speciose, who travelled to China to purchase wedding gowns to add as a service to her floral shop. Speciose was tortured in the early 1990's and fled with her family to a Burundi refugee camp before the 1994 genocide. She returned in 1995 to nothing - most of their property had been destroyed. But now she is looking to expand her floral shop and wedding supply company business into larger events and open a catering center.

Yesterday, I met with two professional HR people, one with a regional East African Bank, Fina, and an HR consultant who is Kenyan but has the franchise for the Rwandan branch of an HR consulting company. All discussions were free and easy and frank. There are very few professional HR heads in Rwanda and there is a long way to go to integrate professional HR practices in all companies, large and small, NGOs and private sector. There is so little HR infrastructure in the country that each and every dismissal must be approved by the government Labor Inspector so that fairness to employees will be guaranteed. The HR community in Rwanda feels very isolated and would like to be linked up to an outside association. I've searched on the web and have only found international associations for NGOs and public institutions and HR Information Systems. SHRM doesn't indicate it has an int'l division but I will give them a call when I get back back.

If any of you HR people have any information in this area., pls. send on. The idea in my meeting the Rwandan HR people is to see if we can't get them to be HR mentors to our women and have them follow up on the training on a regular basis.

In closing, the Rwandan women are beautiful, the men tall and thin. They are all warm and soft people.

Let me begin by telling you a little about Bpeace.

2008-12-21T17:36:00.000+02:00

Going to Rwanda in March is an opportunity to apply my HR experience in a country where creating employment can mean the difference in preventing future violence. I hope you can provide the tax-deductible financial support to make this dream a reality.

I'll be traveling under the Bpeace banner when I go--a non-profit international network of business professionals who volunteer to help women entrepreneurs in post-conflict countries--like Afghanistan and Rwanda--expand their businesses and create employment. When people have jobs, they can feed their children, send them to school and plan for a more peaceful future. Bpeace is so effective, we receive recognition and support from the US Department of State.

I've been volunteering with Bpeace for several years, and in my my new role, I will be working in Rwanda for several weeks. The 18 Rwandan women entrepreneurs I will coach have established businesses in commercial landscaping, freight forwarding, owning and managing hotels, restaurants and much more.

Our big goal for the immediate future is to help Jeanne and Slyvie (at right) open a beauty vocational school in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. There are not enough locally-trained hair stylists and the demand is so great that stylists from other countries are trying to fill the need!

Have I mentioned that these Rwandan women are extraordinary? Their dedication, persistence and excitement about their businesses, and courage and even joy in helping to build post-genocide Rwanda is something to behold.

I am inviting you to become a partner with me in this venture. My task will be to provide human resources training and consultation to the 18 entrepreneurs and their staffs in our 3-year program. I will be working with them on selection, recruiting, interviewing, training and motivating staff. I will spend individual consulting time with each woman. All of this with the service of an interpreter.

My travel and all other expenses are entirely voluntary. Bpeace does not have the funds to provide any financial support—although there is enormous professional capital from many dedicated business volunteers. I will need $5,000 to make this trip. The good news is that your contribution on my behalf to Bpeace is tax-deductible.

So click the “Donate” button at the right and support these women.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions and you would like to know more about Bpeace or my plans with Pascasie (a beer and soda distributor above), and Symphrose, Console, Constance, Francoise, Languida and these other fabulous women entrepreneurs.