Nour Emam, co-founder and president of Daleela by Motherbeing: For a special Ramadan edition of our weekly My Morning Routine column that we will run through the holy month, we spoke to Nour Emam (LinkedIn), co-founder and President of Daleela by Motherbeing. We asked Emam the usual questions to find out how a successful member of the community starts their day and threw in a few more to find out how she adjusts to Ramadan and what she looks forward to in the holy month.

My name is Nour Emam — I’m the co-founder of Daleela by Motherbeing. My role as president focuses on communication, content, growth, and the overall company vision and strategy.

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We rebranded, and we now go by Daleela by Motherbeing. Our application is called Daleela, while the holding company is still called Motherbeing. As we launched the app and worked to be inclusive of women at all stages in life, we realized the name Motherbeing comes with constraints and prejudices. People often associate it with certain things, like maternity, motherhood, and childcare, even though our vision is much broader. We chose Daleela because we wanted a person’s name that would build a sense of connection to the AI health assistant within the app, as well as a simple name that would work across the region and beyond — a name without barriers.

Our role is primarily to make healthcare accessible while serving as a companion for women, answering and guiding them throughout their health journeys. Daleela’s main objective is to make information on common women's health issues and conditions as accessible and frictionless as possible. Through the app, users can receive diagnoses for conditions such as infections and discharge and get birth control prescriptions.

The app’s AI chat feature is a big thing. We’ve answered nearly 600k questions and attracted 80k users since the app’s launch in August. The feature aims to help women of all ages get started on at least the first or two steps of their healthcare journey. There’s a clear need for instant answers to questions on reproductive, sexual, and general health.

Back in 2019, I was diagnosed with post-partum depression and anxiety after having my first child. I was diagnosed very late, around 7 months in, and through therapy I realized it’s because there was very little accessible health information that was culturally relevant to me. And because I really like teaching and being in front of people, it occurred to me that I could teach people about health for a living. That’s basically how Motherbeing was born. I started out by conducting online Zoom classes before the project expanded to on-demand programs, and then into a full-fledged app.

My morning usually starts at 7am. I start by feeding my seven-month-old daughter and making sure my elder daughter, who is six, is ready for school before her father or I drop her off. I split the next two hours between quality time with my child and answering as many emails as possible before the day actually starts. I make breakfast while standing, or as I’m rocking, feeding, or taking care of the baby. I heat my coffee at least two to three times because it gets cold before I can drink it. It’s hectic and not very glamorous, but I love it.

In Ramadan, I usually do a lot of meal prep for Iftar early in the day before work starts. My schedule gets a lot more packed during the month. School ends earlier, so my kid gets back home sooner. The workday gets crunched while my team and I try to maximize productivity, even though that inevitably dips with fasting.

One way I stay organized during Ramadan is by getting a lot of work done in the evening. After the kids are in bed, there’s a good 2-3 hours during which I go into deep-focus work that I usually can’t get done during the daytime.

I’m privileged to have a partner who’s very supportive. We split childcare equally. Some days, I work from home with the baby, and other days, he takes over while I head to the office. With two kids, working at the office feels like a marathon. You race to finish everything that you possibly can because you know you won’t be available from 4-5pm until 9-10pm.

The one constant of my day is sitting in silence for a good 20 minutes after putting my girls to bed. That’s when my work ideas jump into high gear. I get the best ideas and remember the things I need to do so I can finish up. It’s a really important 20 minutes.

In the next six weeks, we’re also going to be launching the period tracker. I’m quite excited about this because it will offer users a novel way of period tracking. It’s AI-driven — your Daleela chat is at the heart of it — so she knows your history from previous chats and she’s able to see the symptoms you’re inputting and flag things that don’t seem right. When you're consulting with a doctor through the app's medical diagnostic feature, she’s able to pull information about your cycle to show the doctor. It’s really holistic in terms of how the features communicate with one another — which really sets Daleela apart from other women’s health and fertility trackers.

A podcast I’d recommend is Spotify’s Science Vs. It’s super cool. Every episode asks a specific question and answers it through a scientific lens. For example, one memorable episode explored why heartbreak physically hurts, interviewing scientists and doctors. We also launched our podcast Bedoon Ehrag recently.

There is a book called The Fifth Vital Sign by Lisa Hendrickson-Jack that I’d highly recommend to female readers. It shows how your menstrual cycle is an indicator of overall health, so basically your fifth vital sign. A disruption in your cycle is an alarm that your body sends.

The best advice I’ve been given is that the only constant in life is change. Things get difficult but nothing stays bad forever. It’s going to get better; just keep going.

If there’s one piece of advice I'd give to younger girls, it’s that you can build something of value if you remain consistent and have a meaningful “why” driving you forward. Here I am, doing this interview with EnterpriseAM about Daleela, the first all-in-one women's health platform powered by AI, and we’re discussing sexual and reproductive health for Arab women — it all feels like a dream. Five to seven years ago, this would have seemed like a crazy notion, but it has come to fruition because we remained anchored to our core “why” regardless of the pivots we had to make.

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