Jumana Abu-Ghazaleh: Pioneering the Feely Internet
CEO, betwixt.us
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jumanaabughazaleh
Bio: Jumana is the founder and CEO of betwixt.us, a tech company dedicated to making professional relationships more rewarding and productive by building psychological safety into workgroups.
She is the recipient of multiple marketing industry awards for her brand strategy work for the likes of American Express, Yahoo, Coca-Cola, Bank of America and Hilton Hotels. She earned an MBA from Harvard Business School and a degree in Literature and Philosophy from Claremont McKenna College.
Innovating in Field of Work:
- Jumana is vocal and passionate about 2 things: first, that empathy is essential to business success and second, that empathy is underrated in the business world. As our reliance on technology increased, Jumana noticed a tremendous amount of attention and investment being directed towards efficiency maximization but none being paid to the development of interpersonal dynamics in a digital world
- Though few would argue that trust and rapport are key performance drivers, Jumana saw the meaningfulness of work relationships decline as a side effect of moving them, increasingly, online
- Knowing that relationships among colleagues were strongest when conversation was the norm, Jumana developed a method of using conversation to build trust and psychological safety into digital professional relationships
- She founded betwixt.us and productized this method – which incorporates research into appreciative inquiry, social penetration theory and Aristotle’s Rhetorical Triangle – in a way that works seamlessly within existing digital collaboration environments
Impact:
- Jumana witnessed the power of conversation throughout a 20 year career in the marketing communications industry. One of her most memorable and effective campaigns sparked a decades-long conversation with the consumer by asking consumers the now familiar question: “What’s in your wallet?”
- Jumana conducts workshops and speaks to institutions and associations around the world about the importance of nuanced conversation and empathy in business
- She serves on the board of the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Claremont McKenna College
Role Model:
- Described as the ‘ultimate positive role model for young women,’ Jumana inspires defiance of limiting cultural expectations
- Most of betwixt.us’s earliest employees are young women working in the tech industry for the first time
- Team members are encouraged to discover their own roles and to create job titles that reflect their contributions and motivate them to do their best work
- Jumana’s own saying is the best way to sum up her approach to people management. She reminds us often that “we are, each of us, simultaneously a work of art and a work in progress.”
Reinvention / Risk / Momentum:
- Charts her own career course and encourages others to do the same
- Creates a business culture that is cooperative, trust-building, empathetic—restoring and preserving humanity in the workplace
- Immigrant, multi-cultural & multi-lingual
- Jumana took a passionate risk and changed careers at the top of her game. She left brand marketing and founded betwixt.us to fight the trend toward shallow relationships she saw spreading from social networking to working life. “It doesn’t have to be this way,” she says. Her goal is to “bring rapport to the cloud.”
- Improved trust in professional relationships increases productivity and innovation. Organizations that bolster workgroup strength using betwixt.us technology give their members more rewarding and satisfying professional lives. betwixt.us uses the power of conversation to build strong professional relationships, even when colleagues are separated by geography, time zones or culture
“Jumana inspires confidence. She doesn’t tell you how to dig–she hands you a shovel and reminds you that you know how to use it”