Leading The Change
Malaysia You Matter: Women We Admire
Women are a whole community
Datin Azrene Soraya Abdul Aziz
This petite yet highly energetic entrepreneur is a mother of 4 who loves to explore the road less travelled and being the wife of a celebrity chef, Azrene Soraya has a love for food as well.
Professionally trained as an image consultant and trainer, Azrene is the founder of Three Little Ahmads, a clothing line of reversible children’s fashion named after her three sons. The clothing brand also features hidden tags and magnetic buttons, making it especially inclusive for children with autism or limited abilities. This way, both able and specially-abled children are able to dress themselves and thus gaining more confidence as they’re growing up.
Azrene holds a Bachelor of Law and Masters Degree in Human Rights Law from the University of Nottingham, United Kingdom. She is passionate about woman's rights as well as the rights of children. Even though she is a corporate powerhouse in her own rights, Azrene has a fun side where she dabbled as choreographer and a dancer. She is also a cake artist and professional baker where she runs a chic bistro in Cheras called the Suka Sucre Bistro.
We would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Azrene Soraya and Three Little Ahmads for winning the recent SUPERB 2019 grant competition for entrepreneurs organised by Teraju.
With over 300 pieces of painting under her belt, this founder of Lukis Tulis Malaysia is a developed watercolourist who started painting seriously just three years ago. Ratna paints in Realism style, focusing heavily on nature. Her exquisite strokes in creating amazing depths of tones make her painting thoroughly captivating.
Ratna conducts monthly workshops to spread the knowledge of water colour. Being a strong advocate of creativity at any age, she has collaborated with many different organisations to encourage others to develop their artistic skills.
She herself decided to learn how to paint with water colour to occupy her time. For the first six months since she started painting in 2015, Ratna spent 4-5 hours practicing just to understand the medium. Admitting that she was never really artistic but has a deep love for colours, she enjoys understanding how the medium behaves and loves how much she can create with water colour.
To view more of Ratna’s work, visit her Instagram page and if you’re interested to join one of her workshop, stay updated here.
Director of Tanoti Crafts, Jacqueline is dedicated in improving the livelihoods of women in rural communities by teaching them how to weave songket, a luxurious brocade native to Southeast Asian countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia. So far, Tanoti has reached out to 20 remote Penan villages in Sarawak and has trained over 200 women there.
This artisan collaborator has carried Tanoti with such a passion in championing heritage and empowering rural community that it emerged as winner of World Craft Council Award of Excellence for Handicraft 2014 and MaGIC Amplify Award 2015 for Social Entrepreneurship.
Realising what she is doing with her team is larger than them, Jacqueline thoroughly understands that everything they do is in the pursuit of ensuring the continued existence of heritage craft. Even though knowing it can be challenging most of the times, she intend to make it happen and see it all the way through.
These women showed us how passion drives them, they showed how giving back to the community is what keeps their fire burning, and every selfless act creates its own ripple to invoke the changes they want to see in the country.
We will be highlighting more women whom we admire in the coming weeks. You may recognise a few, some you may not. One thing’s for sure, regardless of ‘who’ they are and what they may have achieved, any one of these women is someone’s daughter, now a wife, mother -- perhaps a single mum juggling work and personal choices, the women who were once your classmate, or someone you may remember from high school, the one who grew up as your next door neighbour, she might have been your best friend’s big sister. Whoever they may be, WE see them as women who are smart, pretty, and happy to be doing what they do because their work or the causes they fight for – matters.
Malaysia(n) YOU matter.
*If you feel there is someone you admire who is making a difference for the country and you would love for us to feature her, do drop us a line and tell us more in the comments (below).
