Two young women of Indian origin from Pretoria, South Africa have received international honors this week for their exemplary leadership work. One of them is a 21-year-old beauty product entrepreneur and the other is a 30-year-old architect. Beauty product entrepreneur Rabia Ghor received the Forbes Women Africa ‘Young Achievers’ Award for 2021, while architect Sumaiya Vali was included in the Times-100 list of 2021. This honor is given to those who give a new shape to the future with their leadership ability.
Ghur’s award was announced during the virtual Forbes Summit. Ghur started Switch Beauty, her online beauty store for makeup and skincare, at the age of 14. Dropping out of school two years later, she was inspired to focus on the business full time. “I began researching product provenance, formulation, e-commerce, packaging, manufacturing, design, with my ultimate goal in mind to create a beauty brand that didn’t break boundaries, and secondly – made things that people would actually use,” Ghur said.
Valley became the youngest architect to feature in the Times 100 list for her role in designing the pavilion for London’s Serpentine Galleries.
Wally founded the company Counterspace five years ago in partnership with some friends while she was also a lecturer at the Graduate School of Architecture at the University of Johannesburg. She said the company was formed with the aim of developing a language of design.
