Sherifah Tumusiime

Sherifah Tumusiime (Born July 13, 1988), alias "Chief Hustler" is a Ugandan Computer scientist, businesswoman, entrepreneur, and technology advocate.She is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Zimba Group Ltd flagship project, Zimba Women, a technology social enterprise supports and resources women entrepreneurs in East Africa, founder of The Baby Store UG, and Senior Systems Officer at Uganda Financial Intelligence Authority(FIA) in Uganda. Quotes Resilience and focus are two important factors to success in business and in life as well. Never lose sight on your long term and short term goals. *Put your goals in perspective so you can always hit your target. Humility, Integrity and Courage are some principles that can take your business far. To lead is to serve, the goal of serving isn’t just service, it is to achieve results Always be bold, and daring. There is nothing you cannot achieve when you are resilient. 5 lesson from Sherifah Tumusiime Sometimes, the best reason to start a store is because you’re a shopaholic. Time management and punctuality. That is really key. If you are not in charge of your time then everything will fall apart easily. Discipline, ensure that you complete a task when you set out to do it. Attitude, which is not a skill per say but one needs to maintain a positive disposition always. Otherwise, it’s easy to get bogged down by everything that will come your way. I’ve always had an affinity for entrepreneurship I think. My first ever venture was selling breakfast waffles to people in my mum’s office. I was 16 at the time. I’d asked her for an increase in my allowance and she challenged me to think of a way to use whatever I had at my disposal in the house to make money. We had an idle waffle maker so I got cooking and she got selling. I started the Baby Store in 2012, I have always wanted to have a store —I am a shopaholic. I love shopping. Having a baby informed the decision to make it a baby store. I started out selling on Facebook and delivering out of the boot of my car in 2012, but that got hectic. I was overwhelmed by orders, so I set up a physical store in a mall in the middle of town. I was still fully employed as well. Then the overhead costs of the physical location got too high, I was hardly available, and the shop wasn’t really making money. I closed it and moved everything to storage but orders still came in, so I went back to delivering. Then I had the brilliant idea to move from Facebook to a space I could control, my own website. Honestly, extreme multitasking. I am always doing many things at a go. It also helps that most of them are aligned in a way and that I am extremely passionate about them. I believe that if you have the will, there is always a way. Time management and punctuality. That is really key. If you are not in charge of your time then everything will fall apart easily. Discipline, ensure that you complete a task when you set out to do it. Attitude, which is not a skill per say but one needs to maintain a positive disposition always. Otherwise, it’s easy to get bogged down by everything that will come your way. Three skills a woman need to be an extreme multitasker It is not what women get wrong but rather a lack of awareness. Most women just simply do not know how technology can be used to better their businesses and I’m not talking about complex things. For example, just using excel for your book keeping. There are even templates for all sorts of businesses but few people know this and this is an issue that cuts across both sexes but more so for women. There is also a fear of tech. We are afraid of what we do not understand so most women who don’t understand technology are inherently afraid of it. I think because tech is still a mystery to most. There’s a lot of work to be done demystifying technology and it’s workings to women. I am the CEO and Co-founder of Zimba Group LTD, a start-up tech company based in East Africa providing technical and software solutions for SME’s that enable them to manage and scale their businesses more professionally. Zimba Group Ltd.’s flagship project, Zimba Women seeks to establish a business environment that provides full support of women entrepreneurs using technology. We are currently working with over 300 female entrepreneurs from the East African region (Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda). With over 8 years of technology experience, I am also the founder of thebabystoreug.com, the first specialty retail e-commerce site for baby products and apparel in Uganda. Prior to this, I worked for Wipro Technologies, a global information technology, consulting and outsourcing company with 170,000+ workforce serving clients in 175+ cities across 6 continents as a Tools and Data Center Monitoring Team Lead as well as for MTN Uganda as a service desk administrator and NOC Engineer. ,I have spoken at numerous international conferences like RightsCon in Silicon Valley and the Shoko Digital Festival in Harare. I am a certified Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt, a 2015 Mandela Washington Fellow and a 2016 African School of Internet Governance Fellow. I think being an entrepreneur is difficult in spite of whatever gender you are really. I’ve always been enterprising so to speak so I don’t think there was a moment where I chose entrepreneurship. It’s something that I’ve always done. In an interview Resilience and focus. There have been quite a number of highs and lows and the only way that my team and I have been able to get through all of them is by being resilient and never losing sight of our long term goals. Challenges unique to online businesses faced in the beginning. Trust: People don’t trust the internet. They think items are fake, that delivery won’t happen or that they will be stuck with items yet we have a return policy. Overcoming that challenge: It was a matter of winning over customer by customer. We have been building this name for years. Also it helps to try to build a personal relationship with my customers. Juggling different roles: I simply prioritize. My child comes first, and then the other roles fall into place. I’m super organized as well- I have three notebooks, two diaries and consistently keep track of everything. We also grew last year. I hired an operations manager in charge of the daily operations and development so I can focus on strategy. External links Category: living people