How self-value has shaped Tharaia’s career journey

Setting up values is like decorating your life with a certain healthy sense of energy that comes in different forms.

It is the power of cultivating your ambitions with a certain sense of self-worth that helps you develop yourself over time.

One of the people who advocates having self-values is Tharaia Ahmed. She is the Director of Sales and Marketing at CFAO Motors.

Her journey began in the marketing industry in 2004 when she was working at Experiential Marketing Tanzania as a Client Service.

“From the beginning of my career to date, there are values I have been upholding to ensure that as time goes on, I keep achieving my personal and career goals,” she notes.

She mentions these values as honesty, faith, respect, courage, teamwork, and perseverance, among others.

“They have guided me through the ups and downs of my journey, and have also defined the kind of person I truly am,” she details.

Tharaia narrates that her first experience at Experiential Marketing sparked an exposure of sorts, which made her work interesting.

“The work was below and above the line because there was no one particular product we were working on. It was during that time that I got to understand different market dynamics aligned with working with clients from various sectors,” she says.

Afterward, Tharaia got married and was blessed with two children. She began to learn to juggle between work and her personal life.

“There were challenging times when I had to travel for work out of Dar es Salaam and leave my six-month-old baby of six months. I am thankful to my husband and the whole family, who have been my support system from the very beginning,” she explains.

After three years, Tharaia joined the airline industry and worked as a Sales and Marketing Executive at KLM. In that role, she worked with corporate companies.

“There were a number of trainings that I did to fully understand my work and how I could grow from it. After almost three years, I wanted to spread my wings further, and a chance to work as a Public Relations Manager at CFAO Motors presented itself in 2012. After some time, I was promoted to the role of Marketing Manager,” she details.

A short while later, Tharaia became the National Brand Manager for Volkswagen when the brand was first launched in the country.

It was during that same time, that she learned about sales.

“There were also training sessions that were offered at CFAO by manufacturers who wanted to become certain that their products were well understood and communicated to buyers,” she says.

The automotive industry in Tanzania is male-dominated. This gave Tharaia an opportunity to challenge herself to become the best in her field.

“I made sure that I understood the environment of this industry as well as its position in the local and global market so that I could work around that. During that time, the company’s performance as well as mine increased because of the way I challenged myself to embrace this role. My knowledge of the industry increased as well,” she says.

Around 2017, Tharaia took over the rest of the brands that are under CFAO, including Mercedes-Benz and Suzuki. A year later, she also became the head of the Commercial department. In her current position, she manages a team of 17 people in different departments.

“It has been a very challenging role; however, challenges are among the things that make us grow, so I found them to be necessary things to have around. Whenever a challenge surfaces, there is a chance to learn something new from it,” she says.

Tharaia applauds CFAO Motors for creating an environment in which staff push themselves to their best abilities.

“One of the things about which I like at CFAO Motors is the diversity at every level. They assist people who work to improve their talents in a way that is advantageous to them and the organisation,” she says.

One of the challenges that Tharaia and her team were able to overcome was when CFAO lost its bestselling brand, or as Tharaia prefers to call it, ‘bread and butter’. This was due to changes that were made at Group level.

“We had to push ourselves and make the best of what we had. In the end, we managed the situation. The rest is history,” she says.

Given a chance to advise her younger self, Tharaia says she would have told her to be kind to herself.

“I would have emphasized to her to take good care of herself and be courageous about her goals. I would have told her to accept making mistakes as long as she would learn from them, and I would have also reminded her to approach challenges with a positive mindset because there is always a window to learn something from them,” she says.

Tharaia advises young women who aspire to work in the automotive industry to understand that the perception of male dominance should not scare them away.

“The automotive industry is more than just the technical part; there are other departments that are part of it. This means that there is always a room where young women can fit in, be it in technology or in others,” she says.