Adding to her accolades as a leader in business and the community, Innovation Solution Partners CEO and co-founder Mariyah Saifuddin has been named as one of 26 Top Women in Tech for 2024.
Purpose Jobs, a Detroit-based company that brings attention to women and companies and their accomplishments, announced the awards, calling Saifuddin and the other women featured “trailblazers,” and going in to say they are women “who are not only excelling in their fields but also paving the way for future generations of female tech leaders.’
Saifuddin joined women from across the country and across industries in the honor; there were CEOs of national organizations and founders of niche startups. Joining her from Michigan were Lauren Flanagan, whose work as co-founder of Jackson-based Sesame Solar earned her a place on Time’s 2023 Best Inventions list. Also among several Michigan tech powerhouses is Trista Van Tine, co-founder of Michigan Founders Fund and creator of Michigan Tech Week.
You can read about all the remarkable women in this class of 2024 in the award announcement at Purpose Jobs.
According to recent statistics from several sources, women make up about one-quarter of all tech jobs in the United States. But only 17% of CEO positions at tech companies are held by women. One in 16 C-suite jobs are held by women of color, according to McKinsey’s Women in the Workplace 2023 Report.
In the tech industry, that margin is even slimmer.
Saifuddin, however, has defied the statistics her entire career. She and her husband, Mustansir Saifuddin, founded Innovative Solution Partners more than 20 years ago, and have built the women-owned, minority-owned IT business to where it is today: Recognized across the Midwest and beyond as a trusted SAP partner to companies large and small.
Mariyah Saifuddin has also distinguished herself as a leader among female entrepreneurs and women-owned business owners nationwide. In 2022, Saifuddin was recognized as a 2022 Enterprising Woman of the Year, an honor given to women leading businesses worldwide. She’s also been president of the Detroit area chapter of NAWBO, the National Association of Women Business Owners, since March 2023.
Saifuddin recognizes her own mother and her role in her success as a woman in business.
“My mom, Jumana Rasheed, personifies grit, perseverance, and possibility,” Saifuddin said when she was installed as the new local NAWBO president. “She immigrated to this country, newly married, pregnant, and without a support system in the 1970s. She managed to get a college degree while raising a family, and start a business.”
When Mariyah Saifuddin got her first real job offer, she hesitated to leave the family business, but her mother told her to take the job. She did, and never regretted it or forgot her mother’s words.
“To this day, she is my biggest supporter and reminds me that anything is possible if you have faith, work hard, and keep moving,” said Saifuddin.
Saifuddin is an alumna of Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses, a 12-week education and networking program for small business owners throughout the U.S. She attended the Executive Education Program at Dartmouth University’s Tuck School of Business through a program sponsored by the Women’s Business National Enterprise Council, an organization that certifies businesses owned, controlled, and operated by women in the United States
