Former Miss New York Iman Oubou wants to provide women around the world with an interactive space for sharing their stories and supporting each other. Her online media company, Swaay, recently re-launched, incorporating new features that provide a virtual space for professional women.
Oubou’s vision for Swaay began after the former pageant queen faced repeated sexism as a young entrepreneur. Rather than disheartening her, these experiences pushed Oubou to help and inspire other professional women.
Founded in 2010, Swaay Media rapidly grew, hitting the benchmark of 300,000 monthly visitors in just one year. But Oubou wanted to broaden the scope of Swaay. To this end, she is currently rebuilding it. This update will create a more interactive online community for women to share experiences and interact directly. The reborn Swaay is currently in beta.
Iman Oubou: a Renaissance Woman
The former beauty queen won Miss New York US in 2015 and placed as 2nd Runner Up that year at the Miss United States pageant. She is also a published scientist in the field of biomedical engineering.
The Moroccan-born Oubou’s first experience facing violence happened at the age of 22. Before preparing to apply for medical school, Oubou volunteered for a medical mission in South Sudan. Then rebels attacked the village where she worked.
“The hospital we were using to treat the injured was completely deserted,” Oubou recalls. “There were kids walking around with AK-47s.”
Experiencing this attack taught Iman a new perspective. “Now, whenever I complain or think I’m having a hard time, I look back at my time in South Sudan and think: nothing was harder than that.”
Encountering Sexism Fuels Iman Oubou’s Start-Up
With this attitude, Oubou held her head high in the face of industry sexism. For her platform as Miss New York, Oubou chose to use her voice to help give other women their own, in her podcast, “Entrepreneurs En Vogue”.
What started as a podcast about successful women soon turned into an entrepreneurial dream. As she explains: “I saw an opportunity to create an empowering platform of what a female-focused media brand should embody: intellect, influence and femininity. Think: Forbes meets Vogue.”
In a Harper’s op-ed piece, Oubou recalls how difficult it was to find investors who would take her seriously. Male investors told her she should focus on her own social media brand as a pretty face. They commented on her looks and dress, and even invited her to complete a deal in one investor’s hotel room.
When Oubou shared these experiences, women around the world spoke up to support her, and to share their own experiences. This inspired Oubou to expand her podcast project into something much bigger.
Iman Oubou Writes a Powerful Op-Ed
“My LinkedIn and Facebook were flooded with messages from women talking about all these ridiculous experiences that were preventing them from pursuing a dream career,” she recalls. “I realized then that my story was not the only one and that we had to build a narrative campaign to change the message and to start to erase sexist stereotypes.”
And so Swaay was born. But offering just a platform for reading content fell short of Oubou’s dream. “We wanted to figure out not just how to be a content provider, but how to provide a platform that’s more interactive for professional women – to not only to inspire, but also to be able to connect with each other.” Thus, Swaay 2.0 emerged – with the moniker: “Where Women Own the Conversation.”
In 2018, CIO named Oubou the number one “Female Entrepreneur to Watch”. Furthermore, she won a top investment prize at the Million Dollar Women Summit pitch contest. Meanwhile, Oubou is available as a motivational speaker to share lessons from her life journey in science, entrepreneurship, and women’s leadership.
