Our Motto

Author: Amara Mushtaq

Many years ago, at the age of 22, I was just wrapping up my first year working in Corporate America. For many reasons I decided to take a break from my early career and travel the world while also diving deep into the world of South Asian community development. A year later I went back into the corporate world with a new purpose. A purpose that I was able to find and define for myself of what it meant to be Pakistani-American.

Today, I wanted to share a foundational moment during that year that guided the path forward. I remember when I became part of board at Women 2 Women Forum, in my first year I wanted to create a simple motto that would represent the many initiatives that would drive the nonprofit in the future and represent the vision of our nonprofit's founder, Nusrat Sohail. Today you'll see that motto embodied in the many programs directed by each of our amazing Board Members.

These were simple but powerful words, picked to represent the different branches that were in development for our nonprofit.

“Empower. Uplift. Inspire. Together.”

“Empower” - to make someone stronger and more confident.

“Uplift” - to raise the level of or improve someone.

“Inspire” - to fill someone with the urge or ability to do or feel something.

And most importantly the word to end this motto was “Together”. Without the word "Together", the word "Empower, Uplift, Inspire" wouldn't have represented the full vision of our nonprofit. No community, no family, no relationship, in fact any healthy functioning system can effectively work without it working “Together”. Making this word part of our motto allowed us to keep in sight the bigger picture of our non profit, as it would grow over the years.

The motto “Empower. Uplift. Inspire. Together.”. It’s what strengthens a community and can shatter any glass ceiling.