Meet the Founders
Why We Built MWBN
The story behind MWBN: How two Muslim women turned their own experience of isolation in business into a community built for belonging.
Every community starts somewhere. MWBN started with two women who, in very different ways, knew exactly what was missing.
Zehra’s Story
Zehra Jagani is a businesswoman, mentor, and creative entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience building her own brand into a successful business, working with clients across the UK and internationally. Her work has been featured in outlets including Sky News, the Daily Mail, and Hello Magazine PK -recognition that came alongside a harder, less visible reality.
As an Asian, Muslim, hijabi woman working in a male-dominated industry, Zehra has spent much of her career as the only person in the room who looked like her. That experience of representation, belonging, and visibility being constantly in question is exactly what shaped what she wanted to build instead: a network that breaks down those barriers rather than asking women to keep navigating around them alone.
Isra’s Story
Isra Altayar is a coach, holistic therapist, mentor and international speaker dedicated to helping women build lives and businesses with confidence, clarity and purpose. With a background in psychology, coaching, NLP and holistic therapeutic practice, she has spent years supporting women to unlock their potential and create meaningful change.
While Isra always believed in her purpose, building businesses was a very different journey. Like many entrepreneurs, she lacked the confidence, guidance and business knowledge in the early years, and often found the path to be long, lonely and filled with lessons learned the hard way.
As she grew multiple purpose-driven ventures while navigating motherhood, she realised countless Muslim women were experiencing the same challenges- building in isolation, trying to balance ambition with faith and family, without a community that truly understood their journey.
That became one of the driving forces behind the Muslim Women’s Business Network: creating the space she wishes had existed when she started- a community where Muslim women can learn, collaborate, support one another and grow their businesses with confidence, purpose and integrity.
Where Their Journeys Met
Different paths, same realisation: Muslim women in business deserved more than a seat at someone else’s table. They deserved a room built specifically around how faith, ambition, and identity actually show up together, not separately, and not in spite of each other.
What This Means for the Community They’ve Built
MWBN isn’t built on theory. It’s built on two founders who each spent years being the only one in the room, the one explaining herself, the one looking for a space that didn’t quite exist yet, and who decided to build it instead of keep searching for it.
That’s the standard the Manchester Membership is held to. If it’s the kind of room you’ve been looking for too, applications are open now.
