Every Deal Is a Dance Ep.2: Building Change: Zubaida Bai on Engineering Empathy and Empowering Women to End Poverty

In episode two of Every Deal Is a Dance, host  Mishawn Nolan sits down with Zubaida Bai, President and CEO of Grameen Foundation, to discuss how engineering principles and empathy combine to create social change.

Trained as a mechanical engineer, Zubaida shifted from designing machines to designing systems that empower women entrepreneurs to lift their families out of poverty. Her journey —from creating the life-saving Janma Clean Birth Kit to leading a global nonprofit— reveals the power of values, alignment, and courage in the face of change.

Together, Mishawn and Zubaida unpack lessons on leadership, resistance to change, and finding “flow” in purpose-driven work. Zubaida’s story is a blueprint for turning empathy into impact.

🎧 Listen now to discover how engineering and empathy can change the world.

Every Deal Is a Dance Ep. 2:

Podcast Transcript:

Announcer (00:10)

You're listening to Every Deal Is A Dance, part of the Look Legal pods from the law firm Nolan Heinmann. And now, here is your host, Attorney Mishawn Nolan.

Mishawn Nolan (00:22)

I'm Ashawn Nolan and I'm co-founder and co-managing partner of Nolan Hyman LLP. Before I was a lawyer, I was a dancer and then I was a choreographer. And so it's not surprising that my law practice reflects dance principles of alignment and flow, especially when I'm working with my clients to monetize their creative ventures. And essentially what it means is aligning your abilities with your goals while at the same time balancing structure and reinvention. I want to make growing businesses less scary and less overwhelming for creators. So everyone I interview in this series is someone who has a story to tell about authenticity, about their reinvention and their journey as a creative business maker. It is an opportunity to hear stories of alignment and flow in action.

Mishawn Nolan (01:16)

Today our guest is Zubaida Bai, a mother, designer, entrepreneur, and transformative leader. Specifically, Zubaida is the president and CEO of Grameen Foundation, which enables women and their families to leave poverty through holistic programming. Leveraging her engineering and social entrepreneurship background, Zubaida aims to eradicate poverty through sustainable development and transformative social impact.

So Zubaita, you and I met many years ago when you launched Janma, the clean birth kit in a purse. And I was really fascinated because not only is the product incredible, I'm a mother, you're a mother and maternal health and infant health is so critical and the amount of illness and disease and death is unacceptable. So not only is the product incredible and beautifully designed in its simplicity, but I also was really fascinated how you combined design, social impact and entrepreneurship. It was a really compelling combination. And for me, I practiced law for many years. And what I've noticed is that I work with clients like you who are really talented. And what has evolved from that is I've realized that there are these hidden business superpowers with people who come from these artistic creative, innovative backgrounds. And I really saw that with you and Janma all those years ago. And I've watched what you've been doing since. And I find your story really compelling. And I wanted to discuss that with you today. So your origins are that of a designer and engineer, and now you're a social impact entrepreneur and CEO. So let's go back to the beginning and see how you went from being an engineer, the designer to a transformative leader.

So your first degree is in mechanical engineering. What is that?

Zubaida Bai (03:17)

Mishawn, thank you so much for having me. And the question makes me happy and gives me a tickle because what I wanted to be in life was a mechanical engineer. And for me, it was a discipline that was rooted in energy, in design, in force, in motion, right? That was a discipline that kind of fueled my fancy for cars. So I really wanted to design and own a lot of fancy cars. As a young teenager, that was my dream. And that's what mechanical engineering was for me.

But eventually, as I did the course, it did allow me to solve problems. And there was a lot of creativity involved in solving the problems. And I realized that I was not just learning about how gears and engines, how they work, but most importantly, how they don't work. And that for me today, if you ask me to define what mechanical engineering is, I would say it's the art and science of building, be it machines, be it systems, be it companies.

Or be it even designing large ideas that today I am a part of in many rooms where we are enabling these world-changing ideas that allow us to move forward. So for me, I believe the definition of how I would see myself as a mechanical engineer has also evolved from that force motion energy to the art and science of building.

Mishawn Nolan (04:36)

Wow, so you're a builder.

Zubaida Bai (04:38)

I'm a builder, yes. I'm a problem solver. don't know if I'm a builder, but I'm a problem solver. And engineers are known to be problem solvers.

Mishawn Nolan (04:46)

Yes, for sure. So we're builders. So how did you get from mechanical engineering to entrepreneurship?

Zubaida Bai (04:54)

There's a sobering statistic that I was looking up right before talking to you, which was, I was one of the two mechanical woman engineers in my class. And at that point, the global mechanical engineers were women was about five to 8%. It's been almost 22 years now and the percentages between 12 to 15%, I believe today. I think that's a sobering statistic. And just as of last week, there was another gender report that the World Economic Forum released and it said it's going to take us about 123 years as a world to achieve gender parity. Now, how does this relate to your question of like, how did I get from a mechanical engineer to an entrepreneur? Because I believe women are inherently empathetic and that is the empathy that allowed me to look at a problem and recognize that it needed me to do something beyond what I was looking at.

My TED talk, which I'm sure you've seen is all around this product that I created, which was a simple birth kit, janma that we started with. And that happened during one of my field visits where I met a midwife who in the middle of nowhere in a thatched hut was giving birth to babies. And in my interaction with her at the end of the conversation, she showed me the tool that she used to cut the umbilical cord. Now that moment definitely was a, I would say, it was an aha moment, but it also shook me as a mother, as a woman. And that led to me kind of shifting from just building machines to kind of thinking about what beyond that, like how do you create products that actually become a vehicle for you to respond to a need that I was looking at? Right. So I would say empathy is definitely a core part of leadership. And that's what allowed me to become or served as a bridge between in my engineering work to entrepreneurship.

Mishawn Nolan (06:53)

I work with lot of women entrepreneurs and one of the challenges is getting financing. And one of the reasons that it's difficult to get financing is because financiers invest in businesses that they understand the problem being solved, right? If they don't understand the problem being solved, it's really hard for them to justify the investment. And as you were explaining, there are problems that women see and women want to solve. And so the more women control the financing, the more women control the businesses, the more of those types of businesses will get funding and will get to solve the problems because we understand problems that men don't understand. So to that end, I know that you are really focused on empowering women entrepreneurs and part of what you've always done and what Grameen does is invest in women entrepreneurs because you believe they are the solution to bringing communities out of poverty. Why women and how are you going to do that?

Zubaida Bai (08:08)

You know, Grameen as a brand actually was founded by Dr. Yunus, who's a Nobel Peace Prize winner. And what he realized decades ago was that the financial systems were created to give loan to people with money and never people without money. Right. And so he wanted to reimagine financial systems. And a core part of that was poor people without money. There are women around the world, a majority of them who don't own assets, who don't inherit wealth.

And so by default Grameen's mission was all about enabling people to walk out of poverty, but especially women and girls. And what we see at Grameen is that entrepreneurship is a space for people to solve their problems at their own terms. And for a woman to walk out of poverty, it's important that she has access to skills that can enable her to live a life in her own terms and thereby also enable other people in her family to walk out of poverty. And we know that when a woman earns a dollar, 90 % of it goes back to her family. There's very little she's going to spend on herself. So from an entrepreneurship perspective, we really believe enabling women to get access to capital is a core part of it. But we focus heavily on the systems. For example, we have a five step approach to do this. The first step is primarily where we go into households of these women.

And we enable conversations among family members to say, she is to be respected and valued as an individual contributing member of this family. So that when she does step out of the house, that the family members respect her and value her, not only her, but also her time. And that they step up and support her in the caregiving responsibilities that she has. The second vertical is where we enable communities to respect these women.

to make sure that when these women do step out into communities that they're respected and valued there. And a core part of our work here is called creation of male champions, that we actually enable men in cohorts to feel less threatened by a woman's economic independence. Because these are the two core aspects, a household not supporting her and a community, especially men of the community not supporting her, that make her very risky in a financial institution's eyes. The third particle of our work is de-risking a woman professionally. So we give her the skills that she needs for being a successful entrepreneur. And we want to make sure that a financial institution looks at her as a de-risked candidate, both professionally and personally. And then eventually when we position her for success with a financial institution, we see huge reductions in interest rate that enable her to be successful now, both from a personal perspective, from a professional perspective, but also how the financial institution perceives her as a less risky client, thereby allowing her to use her own profits and not pay heavy interest rates. So we leverage entrepreneurship to solve poverty, not just by focusing on the woman, but fixing everything around the woman so that a woman can show up with her full potential.

Mishawn Nolan (11:23)

Yes, that makes a tremendous amount of sense. And what I'm hearing from you though is you're going in there and you're changing the entire system. You're changing the thoughts around women and their role. You're changing how society responds to them. You're changing how the family functions, how the community operates. It's a lot of change and it's all changed for the good, but it's still change. And I know from working with businesses and clients, that when things are going well or well enough, no one wants to make any changes. Even if you have ideas or someone at the organization has ideas about how to make things better, people really fear change. So how do you address the resistance to change?

Zubaida Bai (12:12)

You know, going back to our question on engineering and what I've done, right? I think a core concept you learn in engineering is the concept of inertia, which is the tendency of an object to resist change when it's in motion. And, and you know that it's going to happen no matter any organization project, even take your own family. Everything is going good. And when you want to create change or modify anything, it's going to cause a lot of friction. think anticipating that that friction is the first step to success in my mind. And change is constant and it is a good thing. And as a leader, the first thing you need to learn is one, you need to accept and be ready for change and friction all the time. But on the other side, you also need to build the trust with your team and your community and your stakeholders for them to trust you enough to know that despite the constant change, they're going to see progress. And there are times that you can fail. That's okay, but then that trust and that readiness for change is, think, what makes you a better human and a better leader.

Mishawn Nolan (13:17)

Do have any stories of instances where you had to deal with the resistance and overcome it?

Zubaida Bai (13:26)

I would go back to my time as an entrepreneur, right? When we introduced Janma, the Clean Birth Kit, I still remember us having done all the market research, understood what's needed, designed this perfect product. And we remember this one woman who was ready to take this to her doctor and ask the doctor to use it. She paid us the money for it. Like I was the happiest person on earth and I was desperately waiting for her call to tell me how the use of the product went. And she called me back after a month literally in tears and she said, you ruined my birth experience because I told my doctor to use the birth kit. And she said, well, who are you to dictate what I should do? I cannot tell you how miserable I felt, but that was a moment of awakening of not understanding the system enough. Like as an entrepreneur, yes, had I solved the problem, had I developed as an engineer, had I developed the best product? Yes to everything. But the context in which I went to implement it, I ended up offending the doctor and their credibility and thereby reflecting on the woman. And of course the doctor didn't use the kit and the birth experience was great. Everything went fine. But I think that's that moment of change, that resistance that I experienced and that moment actually redefined how the business operated, what our channels of distribution should be, who are our key stakeholders. They ended up becoming the gynecologists themselves because we did not want to hurt their ego, we wanted them as partners and collaborators. So I think that's one example of a friction very earlier on in my career that was a hard awakening, I would say.

Mishawn Nolan (15:04)

Yes, but the pains that you must go through to develop as an entrepreneur and to develop your business. We all have those pain points. So the world is changing rapidly. The world has been changing rapidly, but all of a sudden it feels like change is accelerating at an extraordinary pace. At Grameen, you're dealing with a lot of changes in the world. And so not only do you have to deal with systemic changes that we talked about, but also the societal structures are changes, technology is changing, how everyone views everything is changing, culture is shifting. So what is Grameen doing? What are you doing right now to deal with the constant change in the cultural and business environment?

Zubaida Bai (15:58)

I believe this is a moment for any organization, not just Grameen to double down on their values and to double down on who they are and why they exist. And I think that strengthens your resolve as an organization, as individuals representing the organization. And for us, it definitely was doubling down on we exist to invest in the power of women and enable them to walk out of poverty forever.

And that has allowed us to redesign some structures, programs, structure our entire global organization as the need be, look for innovative strategic partnerships. So I think a lot is happening as the world constantly changes around you, as long as you're grounded in your roots of who you are and why you exist, I think it allows you to stand strong and kind of adapt to the change as need be. And that's what Grameen's doing as well.

Mishawn Nolan (16:53)

I love that you say that because my philosophy, my methodology is first you assess who you are and where you're at. The next step is to set an objective. And the way that we set an objective is we look at our values and our purpose because your objective, your goals are always driven by your values. And your values don't change where the world around you may change and the technology may be changing but the values don't change and it's always your North Star. It's always where the business is going. Even though you have to shift the path a little bit, you're always going towards the same end and the end are the values. So I really resonate with what you said. So looking forward, knowing that there are additional changes, how do you stay focused on the North Star, on the values and communicate that to your strategic partners and with all the members of the organization?

Zubaida Bai (17:56)

I believe as an individual, as much as the organization needs to be grounded in who they are and what they exist for, think as an individual, it's also important for me at the helm to understand what is my North Star. And for me to believe in that and for me, my North Star has always been standing up for the invisibility of people in the world, which started with definitely women and girls around me, but my journey over the last few decades has told me that invisibility is not just women and girls, it's beyond. There are so many more people who are invisible because of their circumstances. So going back to the previous answer, I believe, one, knowing your own North Star, two, enabling that any organization you represent grounds you in your own North Star, but also understanding what the organization stands for.

And it's so important for every single individual to see what the North Star of the leader is and also what the North Star of the organization is. And like you rightly said, I think this is a moment of change and it is a moment of, I would say significant change. And you really need to know who you are and encouraging every single member in your organization to deeply reflect on that and enjoy their work and value.

their work and value the outcome of their work and enable them to see the bright side. I think all that is what's going to keep you ahead today because in this crazy world where you can get distracted with every new crazy thing that's dropping around you every single second, it's so important that you see the meaningful work and what that work does for changing lives around you.

Mishawn Nolan (19:39)

What we're talking about is alignment, right? Your values as the leader needs to align with the values of the organization and all the individuals and other stakeholders and other strategic advisors. If all your values are in alignment, you can move forward together. If people are out of alignment, you're going to hit some friction. And so oftentimes in order to get alignment, what we look at is what is flow for the individuals. Like if you are in your flow as you're providing services and energy to the organization, you're usually in the best alignment. So just going back to you and your origin story, what is flow for you? When are you energized? When are you in that flow?

Zubaida Bai (20:26)

I think I have two responses to that because both of those are very relevant. One is for me, my flow is my 4 a.m. where I'm not disturbed by anybody with a silence around and I really can reflect on kind of everything that needs to be done and self-prioritize to who I am and what I'm going to do that day, reflect sometimes near future, sometimes farther into the future.

But also flow for me is when I'm talking to our stakeholders, the women and girls we serve, the communities we serve, just that engagement of that genuine empathetic interaction of listening, I think that's also a moment of flow for me. So yes, I'm in a flow when I'm alone, when nobody's around, and also in a flow when I'm in deep listening mode, when I'm listening to the stakeholders that we serve.

Mishawn Nolan (21:16)

and making sure that they are not invisible.

Zubaida Bai (21:19)

and making sure they're not invisible, of course.

Mishawn Nolan (21:22)

Exactly. All right. My final question for you is what can other entrepreneurs and business makers do to support your efforts at Grameen and to make sure no one is invisible and that we empower entrepreneurs to eradicate some of the problems in our world?

Zubaida Bai (21:44)

For me, the first step is to know what you want to do. And I believe looking for organizations that resonate with your own values. I encourage everyone to visit grameenfoundation.org, which is our website, talks about our global programs, the initiatives that we do in investing in the power of women There's also a new wave that Grameen Foundation has embraced in terms of ending financial abuse in the world. We believe that the financial systems as we see today are inherently biased and not supportive of the invisible, especially women and girls. And so I'd really encourage everybody to visit our website to learn more about our work, but also look for other organizations that are doing mission aligned work to your own values. Because if one thing any individual can do today is support organizations that are crossing the valley of death, as I will say through these constant changes and there are many organizations standing strong and still believing in the work that they do in creating a future vision. I would say volunteering your time, you know donating your money, spreading the word about the good work. All those are definitely good things to do and keep on your radar.

Mishawn Nolan (22:58)

Thank you very much for sharing your insights with us and sharing your story of mechanical engineering to entrepreneurship and how we can all align our values to make a difference. So I really appreciate it. Thank you very much.

Zubaida Bai (23:19)

I appreciate this conversation and the opportunity to share all of this.

Announcer (23:23)

Thanks for listening to Every Deal is a Dance. If you've enjoyed the show, please share with other creative business makers and kindly rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform. For more information on how we can help with your own legal needs, check out our services at nolanheimann.com. That's N-O-L-A-N-H-E-I-M-A-N-N.com.