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Gisela Qasim was the breadwinner of her family when she lived in Germany. That all changed when she moved to Silicon Valley.
“Every door was closed,” she said.
Qasim, a technical project manager, decided to put her career on pause to take care of her 4- and 5-year old children when her husband invented a product Google was interested in.
“I thought, ‘I’ve never stayed at home with them. Let’s switch – you do the work, I stay home with the children. And as soon as I’m settled in, I will go back to work,’” she said.
But she couldn’t get back in, at least not in a similar role, she said. As she talked with other mothers at the German International School of Silicon Valley in Mountain View, where her children attended, she realized this experience wasn’t unique to her. Silicon Valley was full of international women who paused their careers to support their husbands in tech and to take care of their children. Qasim calls these women “family managers” or “evolution managers.”
“We have creative plans and ideas, and we want to do something special,” she said. “We can do more than be family managers.”
In February, Qasim started the Creative Collective of Silicon Valley, a team of seven women working together to uplift family-owned startups in fields like food, art, health and education. The collective’s long-term goal is to lobby for more part-time work to allow “family managers” to pursue their careers. The intermediate goal is to help with relocation services, as many collective members felt the relocation services they used were less than adequate. The collective also seeks to create a sense of community and belonging, a goal that manifested itself as the World Kitchen at Ava’s Market in downtown Mountain View.
“In German, you say ‘Liebe geht durch den Magen’; the way to a person’s heart is through their stomach,” Qasim said. “We have people and food from all different countries and we bring them together to eat, and we can take care of their maybe not food-related needs, but also the sense of belonging and information and how we can help them get settled.”
The World Kitchen at Ava’s Market, which opened April 26, offers a rotating selection of international cuisines for lunch made by members of the Creative Collective Tuesday through Friday, with sourdough bread offered Saturday mornings. Find Colombian dishes like ajiaco soup with pan de yuca (chicken and potato soup with flatbread), Mexican dishes like pibil tostadas, Portuguese dishes like shrimp curry, Peruvian dishes such as lomo saltado empanadas and Bavarian bratwurst. Guests can dine in at the tables next to the deli counter or order their meals to go.
Qasim met Juan Origel, the owner of Ava’s Downtown Market and Deli, in August, when she began using his commercial kitchen space to produce bratwurst for her company FrankoniYUM.
“Most of my professional work life, I was a consultant in different projects for DHL in Germany, and my success was based on I would take on the work nobody else would like to do,” she said. “And so this is kind of how I operate – what is needed, I can do it. And it happens to be sausages that are needed here.”
Using a recipe for Franconian brats given to her by a butcher in Herzogenaurach, Germany, she began catering for private and public Oktoberfests as well as at corporate events for companies like Audi and ChargePoint. When Origel expressed interest in having the deli section of Ava’s Market revived, Qasim had just the solution for him, and World Kitchen was born.
Jimena Mateos, who now leads the Mexican lunch day at World Kitchen, was a historian in Mexico before moving to Silicon Valley for her husband’s career with their 2-year-old daughter.
“I think we find ourselves in this position where now we want to go back to work, and it’s really hard to find a part-time job, (which is necessary to) keep doing what we want, which is take care of our kids and at the same time work,” she said.
Like Qasim, she remembers her relocation services were less than satisfactory.
“He was not very sensitive to our needs at the moment and the needs of what a mom with a 2-year-old needed,” Mateos said.
Mateos feels the initiative gives her the opportunity to share her culture with others and bring people together.
“For me, cooking is just my connection with my roots and my identity,” she said. “And it’s not just the cooking – it’s the way you go grocery shopping, what kind of products you select, the cloth I choose to cover my tortillas with. Everything has history. It’s like ancient tradition. Our knowledge of what we eat is because of where we were born and how humans respect the environment. And I think it has come together in this kitchen because we all have such a deep connection with our cooking.”
The Creative Collective isn’t just for women – all interested “family managers” are encouraged to participate. Stop by in person or send them a direct message on Instagram, said Qasim.
“I would like to collect enough to at some point open up shop the full day at Ava’s, so serve breakfast, have lunch, have an afternoon appetizer, coffee and cake thing, and have dinner,” she said.
World Kitchen at Ava’s Market, 340 Castro St., Mountain View, Instagram: @creativecollectivevofsv. Open Tuesday through Friday 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and Saturday 8:30-11:30 a.m., or until supplies last.