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          BIMA: Diversifying Your Media Spend 

          In this panel discussion, digital media experts will dive into how brands can position themselves for success with a diversified strategy.

          06/06/2023

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          Digitas

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          City Awake: 2023 Words of Wisdom ft. Corey Thomas

          Join us as we hear from Corey Thomas, Chairman & CEO of Rapid7, and Andrew Farrington, an advisory board member City Awake.

          06/22/2023

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          F.U.N. Lives On: Live Like A Local Tours Boston

          Join us to celebrate the history, culture, food, and local businesses of Nubian Square, the heart of Black culture in Boston.

          06/28/2023

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          Fierce Urgency of Now Festival
          2023 Fierce Urgency of Now Festival

          The Fierce Urgency of Now Festival brings Boston’s diverse young professionals together with business leaders, organizations and their peers to build connection, advance careers and ignite positive change.

          09/12/2023 -

          09/15/2023

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          BIMA
          BIMA: Diversifying Your Media Spend 

          In this panel discussion, digital media experts will dive into how brands can position themselves for success with a diversified strategy.

          06/06/2023

          5:30pm - 7:30pm

          Digitas

          arrow-go
          Read More
        • ...
          City Awake
          City Awake: 2023 Words of Wisdom ft. Corey Thomas

          Join us as we hear from Corey Thomas, Chairman & CEO of Rapid7, and Andrew Farrington, an advisory board member City Awake.

          06/22/2023

          5:00pm - 7:00pm

          Rapid7

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          F.U.N. Lives On
          F.U.N. Lives On: Live Like A Local Tours Boston

          Join us to celebrate the history, culture, food, and local businesses of Nubian Square, the heart of Black culture in Boston.

          06/28/2023

          3:45pm - 6:00pm

          Tropical Foods - Roxbury

          arrow-go
          Read More
  • Learning & Development
        • Learning & Development

          • Overview
          • Call for Nominations
          • Resources
        • EQ to Elevate Workplace Well-being

          Designed for mid-level managers and supervisors, this new certificate program addresses workplace well-being through unique, innovative, and actionable methods.

          Read More
          Transformational DEI Certificate

          Join our Transformational DEI Certificate! Our comprehensive learning & development offerings are designed to connect and grow strong leaders who lead both inside and out of the office.

          Read More
          Women’s Leadership Program

          Our Women’s Leadership Program enables you to take your leadership to the next level by arming you with the most in-demand leadership toolkit.

          Read More
          How to Be an LGBTQIA+ Ally in the Workplace

          Expand your DEI professional development with a virtual workshop focused specifically on LGBTQIA+ identities and inclusion.

          Read More
  • Economic Inclusion
        • Economic Inclusion

          • Overview
          • Economic Inclusion Committee
          • Fierce Urgency of Now Festival
          • Pacesetters
          • Resources
        • ...
          Economic Inclusion
          Economic Inclusion

          Our Economic Inclusion Committee provides strategic support around research, policies, and programs that are focused on building equal opportunity.

          arrow-go
          Read More
        • ...
          Economic Inclusion
          Pacesetters

          We are developing an ecosystem of corporations and partners with the influence and buying power to transform economic inclusion for minority business enterprises (MBEs).

          arrow-go
          Read More
        • ...
          Fierce Urgency of Now Festival
          2023 Fierce Urgency of Now Festival

          The Fierce Urgency of Now Festival brings Boston’s diverse young professionals together with business leaders, organizations and their peers to build connection, advance careers and ignite positive change.

          09/12/2023 -

          09/15/2023

          Greater Boston

          arrow-go
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          Read More
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          Read More
          Transportation
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  • Our Networks
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        • OUR NETWORKS

          City Awake

          City Awake empowers young professionals in a variety of ways that encourages these rising leaders to stay invested in the region’s future success.

          Read More
          BIMA

          BIMA (the Boston Interactive Media Association) serves a vibrant community of like-minded professionals from agencies, brands, publishers, and ad-tech companies with business interests in the New England market.

          Read More
          Women’s Network

          For more than 25 years, the Chamber’s Women’s Network has connected female professionals of all background and career levels. Today, our Women’s Network is the largest in New England, strengthening the professional networks of women each year.

          Read More
          Massachusetts Apprentice Network

          The Massachusetts Apprentice Network convenes employers, training providers, and talent sources interested in developing and implementing apprenticeship programs in occupations across industries and statewide in fields such as tech, advanced manufacturing, healthcare, financial services, and more.

          Read More
          Pacesetters

          We are developing an ecosystem of corporations and partners with the influence and buying power to transform economic inclusion for minority business enterprises (MBEs).

          Read More
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Beyond Women’s History Month: Calling on Women to Continue Sharing Our Stories

Maya R. Said, Sc.D., Founder and CEO, Outcomes4Me

‘Don’t be afraid to aim high – if you can see yourself getting there, you’re not aiming high enough!’ – this is one of the guiding principles that has shaped my life and that I recently shared in my acceptance speech for the Pinnacle Awards at the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce celebration event on January 27th. 

The Pinnacle Awards honor Greater Boston’s dynamic leading women for their contributions to the workplace and their commitment to every community. I never expected to win such an award, let alone be standing on the podium surrounded by more than 1,000 highly accomplished individuals – mostly women – sharing my reflections on what got me to where I am today. 

The reaction I got from the audience when I spoke those words and the social posts and private messages that followed surprised me even more. I honestly never imagined that this would resonate with so many people and that me sharing it would get others that believed in it to amplify it. After all, I knew they meant something to me, but I didn’t imagine they would mean so much to others. 

The reactions I got made me realize that we often underestimate the impact that our stories and the stories of our lives can have on others. This is why as the month of March comes to a close and we conclude Women’s History Month, I feel the urge to call on every woman out there to not shy away from sharing your stories – because you don’t know whose life one of your stories will touch and what that life will become because she happened to hear one story and be touched by it. 

So, here I am walking the talk and sharing one of my stories – the result of my reflections as I was preparing the acceptance speech for the award. 

As I reflected on my career and life so far, I realized that I had never really taken the time to think through all the things that may have played a role in shaping the woman I have become and reach this point in my professional and personal life. As I let my thoughts guide my pen, I found myself writing a list of fifteen principles that did have an impact on me – not one, not five but fifteen and I am sure if I were to sit down today and reflect more, I would come up with more! – because what got me to where I am today is not a fixed set of principles but rather a dynamic collection of beliefs, shaped by my environment, my personality, and my experiences. At the awards, I only shared five of these principles due to time constraints, here I share all fifteen and the anecdotes that got me to come up with them – maybe one of them will resonate with one of you, and if it does, this article was worth writing! 

1. First and foremost, never take no for an answer.

If I had accepted the millions of NOs I have gotten in my life, I would not be where I am today. I mean, a Syrian, Muslim, Woman growing up in Syria loving math and physics in the 80s pre-internet and pre-cell phone, I am sure you can imagine how many NOs I have gotten and continue to get, especially now as an entrepreneur! 

 

2. Do not be afraid to aim high – if you can see yourself getting there, it’s not high enough!

No guts no glory! When my uncle, on a visit to Damascus in the summer of 1993, told me that if I loved math and physics, I should apply to MIT but that I will never get admitted–especially with a high school degree from an unknown school in Damascus – that automatically pushed me to try to aim for it! One thing is certain: if I had not tried, I would not have found myself one year later on a flight from Damascus, alone, landing at Logan Airport, stepping foot for the first time ever in the US, being greeted by people I had never met to start the greatest adventure of my life. 

 

3. Bet on yourself, even if you are not sure what exactly you are betting on.

If I look at my career so far, I can rewrite the story to make it all make sense and connect the dots. After all, if you wanted to be a founder of a health tech company looking to improve outcomes and accelerate innovation in cancer, it would make a lot of sense to study Biology and Electrical engineering & Computer Science as undergrad, and then earn master’s degrees in Bioengineering and Signal Processing and a doctorate in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science and Systems Biology. Then, it would also make sense to pursue business training at a top-tier consulting firm, such as the Boston Consulting Group, before building your operational experience and network by being a pharmaceutical executive. But that would be re-writing history to say I did all those things deliberately. The one thing I can tell you is at each bifurcation in my career my key question was ‘would I regret not having tried?’ – I knew that the next thing I was embarking on, was helping me develop and learn something, even if it didn’t work so the two dots were connected, but I didn’t know the ultimate path I was on or how all the various dots in my life would ultimately come together. I just trusted my instinct and myself. 

 

4. Know what excites you, what keeps you going, and be curious about discovering who you really are.

Recognize that life is first and foremost a self-discovery journey. I never knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. In fact, true story: when I was a sophomore at MIT, my advisor asked me if I knew what I wanted to do as a career. My answer was, I am not sure but here are three things I think would make me fulfilled: winning the Nobel prize, being the president of a renowned, world-class university, or creating and running a multi-billion-dollar innovative company. (As I said, AIM HIGH!) The point is: I had no idea what I wanted. But digging deeper, I realized all these things had things in common, which were: science & innovation, legacy, and leadership & impact. As I matured, I discovered that what keeps me running is a mix of intellectual challenge, the excitement of the unknown, the adventure, and the opportunity to have an impact on others. That is where I get my energy. 

 

5. Do not be afraid to be your authentic self, put yourself out there, and do not apologize for being who you are.

In fact, your uniqueness is probably your secret superpower – what will make others notice you. Make sure you leverage that. But also, don’t be afraid to show your vulnerability, it will make people trust you and know that you too are human. When I first came to the US and decided to study electrical engineering at MIT, I noticed that, as a woman, I was a minority in class – but that ultimately meant that people remembered me, they noticed who I was! Then, a few years later, when I moved to the Paris office of the Boston Consulting Group, not only I was among only 3 senior women in an office of over 400 consultants, but also, being a Syrian coming from the US, made me a rare breed (a breed of one!). Clearly people noticed and they were curious – what I learned during those years is that, by fully embracing all the aspects of who I was, I ended up not only being noticed but it helped me connect to many different people I would have never connected to if I had not fully embraced the multidimensional and multicultural facets of who I have become. And, perhaps more importantly, I was helping to pave the way for a generation of first-year consultants to see that it was possible to be different, and succeed in the senior ranks.

 

6. Always know why you are doing what you are doing but do not worry if you do not like the answer.

Different stages of life and circumstances bring different constraints. What is important is that at any point you know why you are doing what you’re doing. If you do not, then it is time for a reset. In the first chapter of my life, I was doing things to give myself an opportunity in life. In the second chapter, it was to build my skillset and competencies. Today, I do what I do because of all the patients we touch at Outcomes4Me, it is the drive to fundamentally democratize healthcare and give back the power to the patient that keeps me going. 

 

7. Do not shy away from making the tough decisions in your professional AND your personal life

Do not try to please everyone – otherwise you will end up with the most common denominator and not do anything. Deep inside you know the right decision, don’t wait too long to just make it. Probably the toughest decisions I have ever made, both professionally and personally, was when existing relationships had to come to an end. I agonized and worried about it, but every time, I found that ultimately if we took the time to talk through what has changed and why the decision was made, with respect, sincerity, and allowing the time for closure, everyone came to the conclusion that it was the right thing to do. 

Read Part Two Here

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About the Author

Dr. Said is the founder and CEO of Outcomes4Me, a health technology company focused on providing patients diagnosed with cancer and other chronic diseases with personalized treatment options as well as outcomes information. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of two public immune-focused biotech companies, Transgene and Pieris Pharmaceuticals, and a venture-backed private biotech company, Home Biosciences. She was the COO of Celsius Therapeutics, an autoimmune disease and cancer-focused biotech company.

Prior to founding Outcomes4Me, she spent many years as a senior pharmaceutical executive at both Novartis and Sanofi leading global functions, including Market Access, Policy, R&D Strategy and Business Development. Earlier in her career, she was a Senior Principal at the Boston Consulting Group and a founding member of its Strategy Institute.

Maya trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), earning dual degrees in Biology and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) with a minor in Economics. She also holds a Master of Science in Toxicology, a Master of Engineering in EECS and a Doctor of Science in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science and Systems Biology, all from MIT.

Dr. Maya Said

Dr. Maya Said

Founder and CEO,

Outcomes4Me Inc.

Email Dr. Maya LinkedIn
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