The emPOWERed Half Hour

Celebrating Your Whole Self and Redefining Success with Rashim Mogha, CEO of EWOW

• Becca Powers / Rashim Mogha • Season 1 • Episode 65

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How do you define success in a world that often tries to define it for you?

In this episode, Becca sits down with Rashim Mogha, the founder and CEO of eWOW—Empowered Women of the World—a platform that supports women in discovering, visualizing, and actualizing their success on their own terms. 

Rashim shares her journey from escaping an arranged marriage in India to becoming a tech executive in the United States and eventually founding eWOW. She discusses the challenges women, particularly women of color, face in defining their success amidst societal expectations and professional pressures. 

Rashim emphasizes the importance of embracing all aspects of one’s identity, both personally and professionally, to drive impact and fulfillment.


Key Moments You Won't Want to Miss:

  • Personal Journey: Hear about Rashim’s inspiring transition from escaping an arranged marriage in India to becoming a tech executive and founder of eWOW.
  • Redefining Success: Learn how Rashim challenges societal norms to help women and marginalized communities define success on their own terms.
  • The Birth of eWOW: Discover the motivations behind creating eWOW and how it evolved into a platform offering community support and coaching for diverse groups.


About Rashim 

Rashim is an influencer, a LinkedIn Top Voice, a thought leader, a best-selling author, a speaker, and a technology and business leader. Rashim is a prominent woman in tech evangelist and a frequent speaker at global conferences. 

Her thoughts on leadership, innovation, and technology have appeared in Forbes, CNBC, MIT SMR, and Thrive Global. She has held leadership roles at companies like Skillsoft, VMware, Amazon Web Services, Oracle, and Automation Anywhere, where she launched innovative solutions to support over $2 billion in businesses.

Rashim also founded eWOW (empowered Woman of the World) – an intellectual platform that empowers leaders to discover, visualize, and actualize their success. Recognized by Business Chief USA as a woman to watch, Rashim received Women Empowerment: Game Changer, Woman of the Year, Women Tech, and Silicon Valley Woman of Influence awards and was inducted into the Alameda County Hall of Fame. 

She was recognized as a Top 100 DEI leader by Mogul.


 Connect with Rashim Mogha


Mentioned on the Show:

Career Accelerator Program: https://www.ewowglobal.com/career-accelerator-program/

Follow Becca Powers:

Note: We use AI transcription so there may be some inaccuracies

Becca Powers: Welcome to another episode of the empowered half hour. And I am so thrilled and honored to bring you today's guest Rashim Moga. And she is the founder and CEO of eWOW. And I met her when she was putting on the last conference for eWOW, which was a global women's summit of empowerment. It was amazing. I got to be a speaker and it was delightful to be a part of it.

Welcome to the show. 

Rashim Mogha: Thank you, Becca. And you forgot to mention that you are also the winner of the top five empowered women of the world. So let's not forget that. 

Becca Powers: Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I humbly accept. So I'm so happy to have you on this. podcast because we share a common theme in our name brand, which is empowerment.

This is the empowered half hour. You have EWOW. Um, I would love for you to tell the listeners a little bit about EWOW. What does it mean? What does it stand for? And then I want to hear the backstory to why you founded it. 

Rashim Mogha: Absolutely. So EWOW is. The empowered women of the world initiative. Um, it was founded in 2018 and basically what it is, is an intellectual platform that empowers women to discover, visualize, and actualize their success through community coaching, celebration, and connection.

And that's what Evo is all about. And I think the most important word in this entire two lines of description that I had Becca. Is their success because so many times as women and specifically women of color, we are so our success is so defined by what society expects from us, how people want us to behave, um, whether we are married or not, whether we have kids or not.

Do we have a high paying job? Um, do we have a good paycheck or not? But that's not what really our success is. Everybody's definition of success is so different. Yes. And, um, and I realized that through my career and my journey as well, in terms of how, how different my success was from what others were defining it.

So we wanted to make sure that that comes in through the message and through the values of Empowered Women of the World Initiative. 

Becca Powers: I love that so goosebumps as you were talking, because. Breaking societal norms is like a passion of my own. And I have learned through, um, you know, I, I'm not a woman of color, but I am a woman in tech and I've been in tech for almost 20 years.

So I've been a minority and I've also just had all the societal labels. Like when I was in college, for an example, I wasn't going to be a tech to be a, you know, a high performance salesperson or an engineer in tech or. I was going to be a teacher because that's what I was told. Like good girls do. Right.

And I had to find my own path. And as I have grown in my own career and have helped other women grow and other people to grow in their careers, I'm like, you need to define what success. Looks like for you. So you are speaking my own language. I love it. Um, I'd love to, um, talk about that a little bit more though.

What have you found to be, um, a result of women defining success on. 

Rashim Mogha: Yeah, and this is important and it goes back down to the back story a little bit, Becca, in terms of, you know, yeah, I want to 

Becca Powers: hear more about the back story too. Yes. 

Rashim Mogha: Yeah. So I moved to United States in 2005. Um, basically trying to escape and arrange marriage and coming to another country to figure out my dream, my dream life and define my life.

on my own terms. And, um, I was well educated. I was in technology. And, uh, when I got here, I thought life would be easy. Little did I know that I would have different kinds of struggles over here. Being a woman of color in technology was not easy. It was not easy at large corporations where we still talk about diversity and how they are bridging the gap.

15 years ago, the story was very, very different. I was paid less, um, as compared to my counterparts. I had a manager who come in and said, See, notice the color of your skin and that's why you're paid less and say that to my face. Oh 

Becca Powers: my gosh. Like I know a little bit of your story, but I didn't know that.

Like that's our story. And then I 

Rashim Mogha: started speaking about it openly. It was in 2018 when I was speaking at Women Transforming Technology, which is an initiative between VMware and Stanford. And as I walked down the stage after delivering fast track your leadership career, that was the name of my session, a few women leaders came to me and said, Rashim, do you have a book on this topic yet?

And I said, no, I don't have it yet, but I'll have one soon. So that day while driving back from Palo Alto to Livermore, I was making frenetic calls to all my friends who had published books, asking them for a publisher. Three months later, we published Fast Track Your Leadership Career, 11 hours in a row.

Into its release. It was an Amazon bestseller in its category. And then people started reaching out to me, people, not just women, but men and people from LGBTQ plus community reached out to me and said, how do we take this conversation forward? And that's how Eva was born. Wow. 

Becca Powers: I get the goosebumps. The product 

Rashim Mogha: leader in me said, I need to build out a platform first.

I need to invest in a product that I can put out there and the, the innovative. You know, think act fast, business leader said to me, what can I do today? And that's how we launched the Evo podcast. And, uh, Eva podcast has Baker, you know, has audience ship in 60 plus countries available on 11 platforms. And that's how it was born.

So the impact that I see every single day when women leaders or even you know, people of color or, um, people of LGBTQ plus community. And now a lot of men too, who are allies and worse, who are still, um, you know, I haven't explored, I hadn't explored that side, but I see a lot of men also driven by societal norms and feeling the pressure to be the provider, to be Uh, to be that one person that the family can look up to.

And that pressure is enormous. Like how do they define their success? So over years, what I've seen is it's not just women who are benefiting from this initiative and what we. Talk about through our coaching programs and in our virtual summits. It's also male allies, it's LGBTQ plus community. And, uh, and the impact has been anywhere from you helped me realize that I was putting wrong definition around my happiness to, I grew 10 X in last five years because of the way now I'm using my skills to grow my career.

And that impact has been enormous. Um, I receive emails every day. I just received an email from somebody who said, I was scared to speak in meetings about the contributions that I was making. And after the program, uh, which is a career accelerator program, and I'm going to talk about it a little more later on, but after the career accelerator program, I could go and talk to.

the C level execs about the program that I'm driving, and I was invited in a townhouse to talk about the feature set. That is the impact, and that's what we want to drive through the eval initiative. 

Becca Powers: I love that you have said impact so many times because part of, um, What I have learned, and it's part of my brand too, is elevate your impact.

Um, because one of the things that I have seen, and I, I I hear that you not only teach this, but you've experienced it through your own transformation is that when you align to your definition of success and you are in alignment to creating a life and a work and your work that feels meaningful to your values, your impact increases like 10 times.

Because 

Rashim Mogha: you're being your authentic self because now you're not taking it anymore because now you are like this is the whole me and I bring in all my life experiences and my diversity of thought and all the skills that I have that you might not even know that play such a big role in creating inclusive products and services all that to build something that's meaningful to our customers 

Becca Powers: I love it so much.

I love it. I can feel your passion coming through too, which is awesome. So I want to, um, ask another question. So we, we heard about your background and why you started the eWOW platform. And now I want to know like, what were some lessons or some challenges that you've learned, um, in standing up a platform that is highly impactful to others?

Rashim Mogha: Yeah, the first conflict was like, do I act as a product leader or do I act as a business leader? Right? Um, Becca, as you know, I've had a, um, a very successful career as a tech exec and as a business leader in companies like AWS, Oracle, VMware, Skillsoft. Um, And, uh, and I have driven multimillion hundred dollar initiatives.

So when you start thinking about that, and when you come from a SAS world, it's very different, uh, than starting something of your own and starting thinking, how do I start small and scale it? Now, I've done it in the cushion of large corporations or, uh, pretty stable startups. Um, but having to think about what my first product or offering is going to look like was a hard choice and, and really, you know, that product leader versus a business leader conversation is something that you're constantly going to have.

The other piece was in terms of defining the niche. Right. I was a woman of color, uh, in technology, but I'm also an author. I'm a public speaker. I am, um, a podcaster, a YouTuber. Um, I do career coaching. So how do I define myself? That was the struggle that I had to deal with before I could come up and talk to other women about it.

And the biggest thing for me was to, you know, To accept the fact that I'm so much more than my job title and, um, and the industry that I sit in and then bringing that conversation into, um, to other women as well, and that is the part that I, I really want to. Um, drill down into, and, and want to make sure that everybody understands you are so much more than the company and the title that you have right now.

Those are variables. They'll keep changing. If you start defining yourself with the job title and the company that you work for. Your identity is always going to be changing and you would not know which identity 

Becca Powers: then you put yourself in a box, you know, one, one challenge. So I had a very similar challenge and then I started to find, and then I had, I found another challenge, um, was that as I was redefining myself out, uh, you know, out and over beyond being a salesperson and technology, I, you know, Ended up like blocking that piece out.

I pivoted so far. That I felt like I wasn't owning all of me. And so there's this alignment thing that it's, it's so cool when you, and I could see you're ready to say something, but it's so cool when you start off on your own and you're starting to develop your brand, because you get this chance to finally set yourself free from all the previous definitions.

And in my case, I did a really good job. Um, standing everything else up, but I kind of forgot the salesperson piece. And I was like, Hey girl, come back in. 

Rashim Mogha: But you know, here's the thing, Becca. And I did some research on this because I always. People would always reach out to me and say, I feel conflicted.

Like which identity do I want to go with? How do I want to put outside or put myself out on LinkedIn? And do I call myself this or do I call myself this? And I thought to myself, when I look at all successful CEOs in the world, we never have that conflict. They're CEOs of the company. They're also on board of various companies.

They go out and speak, they write books, and they embrace all of it. So why do we People who are yet not there at the CEO level who are moving towards that, feel that conflict, feel that they're taking something away from their job to, to spin out or to leverage other skill sets that they have. They shouldn't.

Becca Powers: I agree wholeheartedly. These 

Rashim Mogha: CEOs bringing, bringing all the experiences as board members, as speakers, as, um, as, uh, Authors and bring that back into their leadership. And that's what we should all be looking at. 

Becca Powers: I love that you said that so much. So listeners, this is a really important conversation that Rasheem is having right now because.

You know, in the empowered half hour, we have a lot of working professionals that are trying to stand up. I, I call it their and, right? They have this and that, and then the con, the conflict starts of should I keep 'em separate? And I am very much on the same page. If you, as you, it's, I've learned this through going through the process, the more I am one, like the CEO you're talking about, as, as, the more that I am one, the more impact I have in my business.

At Cisco and the more I have impact I have in my business at Power's Peak Potential, I can do both. And the more I align as one, um, the results are good everywhere. 

Rashim Mogha: Yeah. And, and then I realized that with my brand value, I bring so much value to the company that I work for. Yes. Now. When you talk Becca, so you have your brand value.

And now when you go into a sales conversation, your clients already feel the power of your brand and want to associate with you. It was the same with me. And, um, you know, when I was at Skillsoft leading their largest business unit, I already had a very established brand. So the moment I walked in CNBC wanted to talk to me and talk to me and brought that credibility to my role and credibility to the company that I was working for at that time.

So, so that's why, you know, it's, it's important to embrace all of you. Um, when you start taking this, this. journey towards your happiness. And you'll be surprised that the biggest, uh, hurdle in that whole process is your own mindset rather than anybody else's 

Becca Powers: thousand percent. And that's a really good pivot point to another question that I want to ask you.

So now that you're where you're at, what's the current aha, that's up for you. 

Rashim Mogha: The current aha is our, Career accelerator program, the impact that it is making right now, being a leader and being a hiring manager for 20 plus years, having led multi hundred million dollar business units. Whenever I've talked to the, the HR teams to bring in a leadership development program for my team, they put out a set of 20, 25, 30 competencies that somebody needs to develop to be a leader.

And that gets complicated. I've been part of highly impactful leadership programs where I've gone in. Five days, you're in the room with everybody who is the cream of the organization and top performers, and you go through that program, you identify your red, blue, green colors, or you identify where you are on the predictive index.

There are a lot of aha moments you come back and you put all that aside and say, this does not go back to work. Let me do this and I'll come back someday when I'm in an ideal situation. And I, that was the most frustrating part for me. So we, when we did our research at the eval initiative, We identified six competencies, six growth drivers that you need to master to be successful in any role at any level.

It's storytelling, it's negotiating, it's influence, it's about how to manage up, down, and across, it's how to manage your own emotions. And then work on the mindset, skill set, and tool set aspect of it to address those. And that is the aha moment. The testimonials that I get, the impact that it is making.

When people come back and say, Because of this program, I'm finally visible in my organization. That's the impact that I'm talking about. When people say that I am now able to have my promotion conversation confidently, rather than realizing that it was a bad decision to talk about a promotion within five minutes of a meeting, that's impact for me.

And those are the aha moments. Those are the stories Becca that give me pure joy. 

Becca Powers: I can tell, it's like radiating. Through you. Um, so I want to move into another question. We talked a little bit earlier about mindset and it's one of your six principles that are available in your career driver or your career accelerator.

Um, but let's talk about mindset. If someone was able to define, define their own meaning of success and really get aligned to the truth of who they are and they're doing. They're starting their brand or whatever that means to them. And they're doing both. How could it empower their life? 

Rashim Mogha: I think the biggest, biggest piece is, and I have realized this throughout my personal experience, even though we often don't articulate it.

When you don't have to hide a self of yourself, when you can 

Becca Powers: Isn't it refreshing when you don't have to hide? It's 

Rashim Mogha: like, be you. Ah, the freedom! Come in as you are, right? And you feel that confidence in yourself to be able to show up. And you have seen me, Becca, how informal our virtual summits are because, and they're informal because we want to remove the pressure 

Becca Powers: on 

Rashim Mogha: the tightness, if you will, of showing up just as a professional.

You are a human being first. Bring your whole self in. We are mothers. We are caretakers. I get the goosebumps 

Becca Powers: as you say that. I couldn't agree more. 

Rashim Mogha: We are business leaders. This is our whole self. There's so much that cro that intersects the transferable skills. So that is the biggest piece. Like when you show up as you are, You can make an impact.

And I realized that my products, my services, not just within empowered women of the world initiative, but also leading these multimillion hundred dollar businesses, they improved the way I looked at it. The way I looked at transformational technologies like AI and cloud computing has changed because I can bring in my whole self into the conversation.

Becca Powers: So there's something that you said in that that I want to kind of just talk about a little bit further and it was transferable skills. So I realized this when I'm working with my women's groups specifically, and they're looking to go into another career, or they're looking to start their consulting or coaching business and building their brands.

I have seen that transferable skills, they think they're starting over, you know, and they, and so I love that you said transferable skills, because I would just want to give the listeners permission to be your whole self, like Rasheem saying, and that what you've done your entire career is transferable to whatever you're doing next.

And whatever you're doing next is transferable to your current. Career. And I don't know if you want to say anything else to that, but I felt like that was worth double clicking on because it's so powerful. 

Rashim Mogha: It's so funny. You mentioned that Beckham I was, um, I was delivering this career workshop at, um, at, uh, fortune hundred company.

And I won't name the company, but it was for leaders. And, um, and we had both men and women in that group. And when we started talking about superpowers, and that's one of the elements that I talk about in our book as well, and we talked about skills, you know, that could be your superpower. I had men write six pages.

Like they kept on writing what all they're good at. And I had a woman leader who was so competent and felt so comfortable. And she sat there blank, looking at me and she said, Rashima, I don't know. I'm just, sometimes I feel I'm just good at organizing birthday parties. And I was like, wow. And I'm like, you know, do you realize that that coordination piece in bringing everybody together is such an important transferable skill that works in your project management, in your program management efforts, in your product management, uh, you know, in your sales roles, right?

When you have to fill in the RFPs and get everybody coordinated to build those RFPs, right? And I was like, that doesn't come easy to people and how could you not just, just think about it and uplevel yourself from organizing birthday parties. And clearly she was good at a lot of things because she was one of the leaders in that group who was recommended for the program, but it's, it's amazing to see how sometimes we.

We shrink ourselves. 

Becca Powers: Yes. 

Rashim Mogha: Right? And we don't let, we, we can't build out a picture from an event. And that is part of the mindset that we work on in this Career Accelerator program. I 

Becca Powers: am so happy that you brought it back to the Career Accelerator, because I do want to encourage the listeners that if.

You're resonating with this episode that you reach out to Rasheem and her program. She'll share them all in a few minutes. But, um, I got to work with her behind the scenes and I, I definitely put my stamp of approval on it. So, um, the work that you do is just so important. So thank you for, for that. doing what you do.

And P. S. If you hear any noise in my background, if it's being picked up by the mic listeners, that is Bella, my French bulldog snoring again, and I can't do anything about it. So, um, but we have about five minutes left and I do want to ask you one more question because it's, it's one of my favorite questions to ask and it oozes through, um, everyone pretty much in the episodes, but why are you passionate about what you do?

Rashim Mogha: Becca, I waited too long to give back. That's the biggest regret that I have. Love that. I I thought that I had to be at a certain level and I had to prove myself. I had to break various glass ceilings to be able to build that credibility around myself, to be able to give back. Little did I realize that you can give back at every level where you are.

You don't need to hold a title or a position at a company to be able to give back. And most importantly, You're breaking glass ceilings every single day at every layer. So, so that is what is my biggest regret, right? And that's what I look forward to every single day. Like, how can I empower? I'm very impatient, right?

I'm not willing to wait for another 110 years. To see gender parity, to say by them, um, my daughter probably would be in her eighties or nineties. By that time, I do not want 

Becca Powers: that I 

Rashim Mogha: have an audacious dream of seeing this world as an equitable world. And I know that each one of us has the power to come together and do that and make it happen.

Becca Powers: Oh my gosh, I got the goosebumps. And I just, I feel your passion and I feel the, um, meaning behind it. Like it really gives you a sense of purpose. And I love, I love that you're getting to do what you love to do and making a difference in the, in the process. Like keep going, keep going 

Rashim Mogha: small, little step in the right direction counts.

That's how I look at it. 

Becca Powers: And that's a really good takeaway for the listeners too. I know sometimes when we're planning new things and we've got big lofty dreams, or we've got a big difference we want to make. We're seeing the outcome and it seems so overwhelming. But as Rashim said, just take a small step in that direction because there's a saying that I have, but there's a beautiful unfolding.

I would have never known how this all would unfold. It was impossible to know what my journey was going to look like. But with each step. a new piece unfolded. And just like for you, every time you took a step, a new piece unfolded, a new idea came, a new connection came, and then slowly you build this world that is powerful, meaningful, um, difference making.

It's just really incredible. 

Rashim Mogha: What's the maximum that's going to happen if you take the risk? You're not going to be successful in what you want to do or successful look different. That's okay. You learn something in the process, right? 

Becca Powers: I love that. Yes, ma'am. So I know we're coming up on time. So let's take a second to share with the listeners how they can stay in touch with you.

Rashim Mogha: So the best way to stay in touch with me is to connect with me on LinkedIn. There's only one of Rashim on LinkedIn. I'm lucky up until now. So, um, reach out to me on LinkedIn. If you are really interested in the Career Accelerator program or want to explore more, go to our website, evowglobal. com and you can find the details.

So what they're, you can also find me on YouTube and TikTok. Um, I will say I'm not very active on TikTok, but I try to do Try to do an okay job over there. 

Becca Powers: That's funny. I'm working on it myself. I haven't mastered it yet. So, um, all right. Well, let's close this session out with an empowering statement for the listeners.

Rashim Mogha: Keep empowering the world and keep empowering yourself. 

Becca Powers: I love it. Well, Rashim, thank you so much for being a guest. It was awesome to have you. 

Rashim Mogha: Thanks, Becca. And I can't wait for you to come to our Evolve podcast and start talking about the awesome work that you're doing. I'm super excited about your book.

I can't wait to get my hands on the book and wishing you all the best. You're doing some amazing work. 

Becca Powers: Oh, thank you so much. We'll make a difference together. 

Rashim Mogha: Keep empowering the world. 

Becca Powers: Exactly.