Meet Jawad, Manager of Hornet’s Health Ambassador Program
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Have you ever wanted to peek behind the scenes of your favorite app? At Hornet, we are thrilled to introduce you to the backbone of our company — our fantastic team. We want you to meet our team, and if we spark your interest and you feel the same passion as we do for our product, apply for one of our open positions.
Meet Jawad, Manager of our Health Ambassador Program from Lebanon.
Tell us about yourself and your role at Hornet.
My name is Jawad, and I’m from Lebanon. I’m currently doing my master’s in microbiology in Istanbul. At Hornet, I manage the Health Ambassador Program. Its a community program where Hornet users can volunteer to spread awareness about problems we face as an LGBTQ+ community, including sexual health problems, STDs (sexually transmitted diseases), mental and emotional health. I train and recruit Health Ambassadors, teach them how to find the correct information, and speak to Hornet users when they need help.
At Hornet’s Health Ambassador Program, we work with local NGOs and help them spread information on how to increase access to healthcare services for our LGBTQ+ community, like testing, treatment, and prevention methods. There are many underprivileged countries when it comes to LGBTQ+ rights. In these countries, many jobs are not funded or are funded very poorly. However, they do have some kinds of services that they would like to offer to their communities. To support them in their mission, I help them spread their news or services among the LGBTQ+ community.
What would you say is special about your time at Hornet?
I was a Hornet user and joined the Health Ambassador Program in 2017. Back then, I wasn’t a medical doctor yet, but I was interested in volunteering. At Hornet, I found a very good opportunity to do it online. As I was interested in the social and psychological side of infectious diseases like HIV I thought this would be a great opportunity to understand these issues — not only the clinical part but the people, the behavioral and the social part of it.
So it’s kind of gradual; I’ve been a user, a health ambassador, and now I’m essentially running the program. I’m very glad about this opportunity, because you can directly impact people and help them. You don’t have to wait for years or months; you can see the results right away by answering users’ questions or by spreading knowledge online that they can read and learn from.
What do you love most about working at Hornet?
It’s my eighth month working for Hornet, and I love it because, since day one, I have received this welcoming and friendly feeling from everyone. Although the team is quite big, and I don’t directly work with everyone, I still feel like it is a big family. If I needed help and support from anyone from the team, they would never hesitate to try to help me as much as possible. I think this is very important for us to stay motivated and stay on track, especially because of working remotely and not having direct contact with people in an office. We are working as a team, and it feels good.
Other than that, I like that we have people from different parts of the world. It’s not just interesting because they come from different countries and cultures and backgrounds, but it teaches you how to see things happening in the world from different perspectives.
What are you passionate about outside of work?
My biggest passion in the last few years has been traveling. So I’ve been traveling because it’s not only lovely to see new places, but it just gives me time to relax and reflect on things. I love to travel alone, and it allows me to think about myself and learn more about what I like.
What is your ultimate Istanbul travel recommendation?
Istanbul is a pretty big city. There are a lot of people living here from all around the world. So it’s exciting to meet different people. And when it comes to culture and history, the city has a lot to offer as well. The first thing I would suggest is a Bosphorus canal tour. You can take a ferry and cross from the European side of Istanbul to the Asian side. It’s pretty exciting and cool on a summer day.