by her own Design
Becoming a top entrepreneur takes passion, determination and plenty of hard work. Fortunately, Zahra Al-Harazi has all that and more. BY christina Kuntz
Zahra Al-Harazi has a lot going on. As she settles in for a chat at a funky cafe on 17th Avenue, she admits she needs to finish writing a piece for a financial magazine, as well as prepare for a talk she’s giving later in the week in Toronto. And that’s on top of her usual busy day as the head of Foundry Communications, an award-winning design studio, not to mention her many volunteer duties with various organizations in the city. “I have this supreme inability to say no to things, so I tend to do way more than I’m capable of most days,” she says, laughing. “It can be good and bad.” Bad because the 41-year-old mom of three “awesome” kids says she hates to disappoint anyone, and that’s always a risk when she takes on too much. But Al-Harazi learned a long time ago that the right attitude can go a long way when you’re a busy mom and businesswoman. “You know, none of us are superwomen and we’re not good at everything,” she says. “We’re going to miss basketball games and we’re going to screw up at client meetings because we came in late because we were dropping off the kids or whatever. That stuff will happen. But rather than seeing it as a stress point or a challenge, I just see everything as an opportunity, so it gives you a different perspective on things.” It soon becomes clear that Al-Harazi is a glass-half-full kind of person. Not in an overly cheery sort of way, but more like someone who is able to roll with the punches and make the best of any situation. Coming across as confident and charming, she cracks jokes
about her shopping addiction (designer handbags are her weakness) but brushes off any compliments about her looks. When the conversation turns to her work as a mentor for other would-be entrepreneurs, Al-Harazi really lights up. “I love entrepreneurship and I love the idea of mentorship,” she says. “It really excites me to see people come into their own and discover what they can do and how they can do it.” Perhaps that’s because Al-Harazi can relate to this personally. She’s quick to point out that her back story is far from a “poor me” tale, but she admits that growing up in Yemen was a very different experience from growing up here. Married at 17 and having three children by the age of 25, she worked as an ESL teacher in Yemen and says she never aspired to be a successful entrepreneur. “I didn’t really think any differently because I didn’t know any different at the time,” she says. “I knew I’d get married and have kids and that’s what I had been told, so there really wasn’t any big dream or aspiration at all until I moved here.” Arriving in Canada in 1996 with her now exhusband, with the hopes of providing a better life for their children, Al-Harazi says it wasn’t long before she got the itch to do something — anything — with her free time. “I was bored out of my mind,” she says. “My ex-husband got a job in another town so he only came home on weekends and the kids had started school and I didn’t know anybody. And it was a new culture and everything was different.”
So, she decided to look for a job. A minimum-wage position at Danier Leather was her first taste of sales and marketing, and it helped give her the confidence to go to back to school, where she discovered a passion for graphic design. “I absolutely fell head over heels in love with it,” she says. “Since then, it’s been this crazy learning curve.” Now heading a staff of 18 as Foundry’s CEO and creative director, Al-Harazi has become a regular on power lists — Chatelaine’s Women of the Year, Canada’s Most Powerful Women by Women’s Executive Network, and Business in Calgary’s Leaders of Tomorrow, to name a few. And Foundry continues to rake in local and international design awards, adding clients from Travel Alberta to Cenovus. Al-Harazi says the secret to her success — and the message she tries to pass on to anyone she mentors — is really quite simple. “You need to have faith in yourself and in your abilities, and you have to love what you do,” she says. “If you don’t get passionate about something, you’re not going to excel at it and you’re not going to give it your all.” Though she’s still struggling to find a way to balance all the things she just can’t say “no” to, Al-Harazi says, overall, she’s content with where her passion has taken her. “I feel like I’ve kind of come into my own,” she says. “And not that I’ll ever stop learning about myself and the world around me, but I’m coming to a good understanding of what it is that makes me tick and what it is that makes me excited and it’s a lot fun. I’m very satisfied with my life.” n
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