Championing Leadership, Supporting Women

Five women founders made up the first cohort for ‘Championing Women in Business Leadership’ a project dedicated to tackling the distinct obstacles encountered by women founders during the initial stages of launching their companies in the MENA region and Türkiye.

For six months, the carefully selected five business founders, from the fields of Edtech, Legal tech, health tech, and content creation, participated in online sessions on leadership coaching, met with business infrastructure experts as well as role models and experts, and received pre-seed funding. The sessions were run by 17 industry experts from the region and included meetings with women CEOs to learn from their journeys.

“CWIBL has been instrumental in enhancing my leadership capabilities by providing targeted mentorship, access to a network of successful female entrepreneurs, and practical training on essential business skills such as strategic planning, financial management, and negotiation,” Hekma Jabouli, founder of Exotech, a company providing advanced robotic exoskeletons for hemiplegia patients, says.

Through Jusoor’s Learning Management System (LMS) the five women founders were able to access these various training, sessions, resources, assignments, and readings throughout the online program. 

The project was kicked off by conducting 1:1 needs assessment sessions between each founder and sector advisors and consultants to review their business plans & advise on pathways for scalability and growth. These sessions also influenced the projects' next steps in the grants disbursement plan and 1:1 experts and consultants matching. By focusing on the needs expressed by the women founders, Jusoor was able to tailor the project to their needs to maximize effectiveness.

Meet the CEOs 

As part of the sessions, the participants met with three inspiring women CEOs with 80+ years of collective experience to provide powerful role models, validate the capabilities of women founders, offer valuable learning opportunities, and emphasize the importance of gender diversity in leadership. 

Loulou Khazen Baz

Loulou is a tech entrepreneur and investor with 20 years of experience in the GCC markets, currently serving as Managing Partner at Spade Ventures and hosting the top 10 MENA podcast Conversations with Loulou. Previously, she founded Nabbesh.com (now Ureed.com) and has spoken at numerous regional and international conferences.

Zakie Karam

Co-founder and general manager of DON TELECOM since 2011, has a 30-year track record in business development and has increased annual revenue by 40% at her firms. She is an active angel investor, serves on several community boards, and holds a computer science degree and an MBA from ESA

Rasha Masllam

An immunologist and founder of NextGen Of Immunology (NGIg) in Dubai, provides global biomedical consulting and innovative solutions. She also leads the Entrepreneurship & Startups Department at Syrpronet to support and empower social entrepreneurs and SMEs.

Meet the other trainers & experts involved

From Challenges to Opportunities

According to Forbes Middle East, women-led businesses make up less than 5% of the MENA's total businesses, compared to a global average of 23% to 26%. 

“There is a lot of gender-based prejudice against us as women and belittling of our abilities, which in turn affects our confidence within ourselves and our projects,” Safa Elcasim, founder of Unlimited Education / Job Link, the first platform of its kind specialized in providing job opportunities for Turkish and Arab university students in Türkiye, says. “CWIBL addressed this issue head-on, bringing into the conversation how we can deal with these challenges effectively and building up our confidence in ourselves and our projects.”

Another unique challenge facing women founders is balancing business responsibilities with family obligations. 

“CWIBL addresses these challenges by creating a supportive community where women can share experiences and resources, offering tailored financial literacy workshops that improve access to funding, and providing platforms for networking and collaboration,” Hekma Jabouli says.

Leadership Skills Elevated

With a unique focus on building up confidence in their own skills as well as providing tools to empower these women’s leadership skills, the project put leadership in the heart of each training.

During the onboarding phase, the Jusoor team conducted a Leadership Baseline Assessment with the women founders. This assessment aimed to evaluate their current leadership competencies along with their perception of their leadership capacities before they received any training or participated in 1:1 expert sessions. The purpose was to track progress throughout the program, ensuring a focused and effective approach to enhancing leadership skills. 

Following the baseline assessment, an end-line assessment is conducted to measure the progress and acquired leadership skills, providing a clear comparison before and after the program. This comprehensive approach ensures the training is impactful and aligns with the founders' development needs.

The leadership baseline and endline assessments evaluated various leadership skills before and after training sessions, focusing on participants' understanding of leadership principles, confidence in public speaking, and ability to enhance voice clarity in communication. They assessed participants' proactiveness in networking, negotiation skills, conflict management, personal branding, and efforts to challenge gender biases. Emotional intelligence, understanding of business psychology, ability to champion causes, creative problem-solving skills, self-efficacy, harmonizing family commitments, time management, and prioritization of mental health were also measured. These evaluations aimed to provide a comprehensive view of participants' leadership competencies and track their progress throughout the program.

The end line assessments exceeded the baseline assessments for each participant with an average overall increase at 41.8%.

“The program has equipped me with various leadership skills. I gained a deeper understanding of the concept of leadership,” Safa Elcasim says. “Delegation is something that I already started applying with my team - but not just delegating tasks but really giving my team responsibility and ownership over their areas of work which has reflected really positively on the team’s motivation and dynamics.”