Highlights

Context

While around the world, the number of disasters has almost doubled since the 1980s, in MENA, the average number of natural disasters has almost tripled over the same period. Approximately 40 million people have been affected by over 350 natural disasters between 1981 and 2010. Vulnerabilities are on the rise across the region, with risks particularly high in urban areas as a result of rapid urbanization, conflict, massive influx of refugees, population growth, unplanned urban development, scarce water resources and arid climates.

The Women for Resilience Program

The Women for Resilience Program (W4R) aims at empowering women in tackling urban risk and developing resilience in cities across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Launched by the World Bank in January 2015, with the support of the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), the Program piloted a startup competition in three cities in MENA: Beirut, Cairo and Djibouti. More than two hundred teams from the three cities, including women and men, presented start-up proposals. After careful due diligence and selection, seven teams qualified for the Grand Finale. The finalists’ proposals tackle resilience challenges across various sectors including energy, waste management, preventive healthcare, transport and informal settlements.

Grand Finale Overview

The Grand Finale is the occasion to demonstrate how women entrepreneurship can be a lever to stimulate resilience action for cities. Experts and successful entrepreneurs will demonstrate how resilience can be mainstreamed into business ideas, and provide success stories. This event will also highlight female leaders from the MENA region and showcase how they succeed at doing what they do.

The Grand Finale of the Women Entrepreneurship Resilient Cities Competition will:

• Provide an opportunity for the finalist’s to pitch their business proposals and leverage funding
• Award the three winners of the Women for Resilience Program
• Showcase innovative and successful business solutions to improve city resilience among business incubators, and local stakeholders across the MENA region
• Advertise the 2nd phase of the Competition (expansion to more than 10 cities)

Expected Outputs

• Drawing in partners and investors to support resilient cities business
• Promoting and encouraging resilience oriented action in the MENA region
• Peer-to-peer learning by allowing all participants to learn from each other’s initiative and benefit from international business expertise.
• Cross-country learning between cities stakeholders and business key players in the region.
• Promote the development of and entrepreneurial ecosystem in the MENA region
• Promote women entrepreneurship among women in the region 

Agenda

Giulia Marchesini joined the Center for Mediterranean Integration in March 2014 as Senior Partnership Specialist. She maintains and explores liaison between the Center’s founding members and partners, while managing new partnerships. In addition, Giulia manages the Center’s newly installed business area, the Mediterranean Dialogue Forum. Before joining the Bank, Giulia worked for the French Development Agency (AFD) in the Partnerships and Mediterranean departments. From 2012 to 2013 she was advisor to the French Ministry for Development where she was notably in charge of dialogue with the MENA region. Her experience in the MENA region also includes coordinating MENA economic and commercial issues for the French Ministry of Economy and Finances (2007-2009). Giulia holds master degrees in Public Administration from Ecole Nationale d'Administration in France, and International Affairs and Diplomacy from the University of Bologna in Italy.

Andrea is the Middle East and North Africa Regional Coordinator for Disaster Risk Management at the World Bank. He has seventeen years of professional experience including eight years in the private and public sectors as a CFO, Vice President, CEO and Director of Business Development and 9 years as social entrepreneur. In this capacity as the Regional Coordinator at the World Bank, he has built risk management programs in 11 courtiers in the Middle East leading to US$ 2.5 billion in risk reduction investments. Andrea’s private sector experience also includes working for the President Clinton Foundation as an energy advisor and for Secretary of State Madeline Albright as an Investment Officer. Andrea has a bachelor and a master degree in Linguistic and History (Bologna University, 2002 and University of Granada); a Master Degree in Economics and International Development (Georgetown University, 2007) and is a candidate for the Charter Financial Analyst.

Juan Jose joined IE Business School in March 2010 as President of the International Center for Entrepreneurial Management after seventeen years of intense political activity. He had previously served in a broad range of government departments, including tourism, finance and employment, gender policies, and health. Güemes holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics and Business Administration (Universidad Complutense, Madrid, 1992) and a Master in Financial Markets (Universidad San Pablo CEU, Madrid, 1993). He began his career as an analyst at the Bank of Spain in 1991, before serving as Economic Adviser to Spain’s Popular Party in the Spanish Parliament from 1993 to 1996.

Maya Karkour is the Managing Director of EcoConsulting which she co-founded in 2003 in the UK. EcoConsulting offers inter-related sustainability services to the construction sector, including BREEAM and LEED certifications, energy-efficiency advice, dynamic thermal modeling, and eco-building guidance. Maya moved back to Beirut, Lebanon in 2008 to create EcoConsulting’s Middle East branch. She oversees or has directly worked on numerous projects aiming at reducing their environmental footprint –including the eco-renovation of Casa Batroun, the first project in the Middle-East to achieve the British BREEAM “Excellent” certificate in February 2014. Maya is currently a Board Member of the Lebanon Mountain Trail Association, and is heading its Education Committee. She is also actively involved in different NGOs focusing on environmental awareness and activities, has been a keynote speaker at various sustainability conferences, and conducts eco-building seminars on a regular basis. Maya holds an MSc (hons) in Environment from the London School of Economics and Political Science and is a LEED Accredited Professional, a BREEAM Licensed Assessor, and Low Carbon Energy Assessor.

Rahilla Zafar is co-author of the book ‘Arab Women Rising’ (published through Wharton Business School) which pro­files 35 women entre­preneurs from across the MENA region. She works with organizations from the EurAsia Foundation to Cisco helping to develop programs and partnerships supporting women in technology. She previously profiled women entrepreneurs for Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women initiative in countries including Afghanistan, China, Nigeria, and India. Rahilla also lived in Afghanistan and Pakistan working for the International Organization for Migration and the NATO-led mission. She holds graduate degrees from the University of Pennsyl­va­nia and the London School of Economics. She completed her undergraduate degree at DePaul University.

Sharif currently serves as partner lead to VCs and startups at Google. In his role, he works with top tier VCs and their most promising startups on strategies that bring all of Google to their fingertips. Joining from AdMob over 5 years ago, he led performance advertising strategy for Google's largest customers in North America covering Mobile, Search and Display. In addition, Sharif is the head mentor at TechWadi, where he leads the TW100 mentors and helps bridge MENA startups with Silicon Valley. He earned his bachelors degree in Neuroscience and Philosophy from UCLA and an MBA from UC Irvine’s Merage School of Business.

Hoda, is an Egyptian entrepreneur. Currently she is the CEO of transi.to, the first online crowdsourced public transportation application. She is working on organizing transportation chaos in the world. Her main goal is making people’s everyday transportation experience much easier. Hoda has been working in Google for different positions for the past 32 months. Prior to that, she also worked for Samsung and Vodafone for couple years. She studied computer science in Loughborough University in UK. She holds master’s degree in international management and computer science from University of Liverpool.

Asli Elmi is an internal auditor and a consultant. She previously worked for LVMH as a management accountant. Asli currently works at Djibouti Telecom in Djibouti. In addition, she is a consultant for young djiboutian entrepreneurs and help them gain a basic understanding of finance and accounting concepts, in a project founded by the UNPD. Asli graduated with a master in auditing, management accounting and information systems from ESC of Lille, France. In the beginning of 2015, she launched her business " Security Risk Management Consulting", offering IT expertise, cyber security and IT services for companies in Djibouti. She currently resides in Djibouti with her husband and her 19-month-old son.

Amira Ramadan, holds a BSc of Communication Engineering, prospective master student for sustainable development specialism ICT4D at Royal Holloway, University of London. She has considerable work experience for more than 5 years in telecommunication industry. She worked for a global leading and international organization such as Huawei technologies and Alkan CIT. Amira is committed to community service and leadership, she is the founder and president of Rotaract Club Heliopolis Royal; a youth development program sponsored by Rotary international. A passionate entrepreneur eager to employ her knowledge and experience in ICT into a great successful business that tackles critical issues of urban cities nowadays. She founded Sensey a startup that provides cutting edge IoT technologies for agriculture sector in Egypt.

Sara Helou graduated from the American University of Beirut with a BBA and a concentration in Marketing. After her graduation, Sara interned at ELIE SAAB and Malia Group in Communications then landed her first full-time job at a regional media representative agency, Mantra Communications where she was Account Executive for an international publication, ELLE Magazine. After one year, she quit her job and found herself in the startup scene, something she had never planned for. But she believes the best opportunities are those that come to us randomly. She says it's truly been a wonderful and insightful journey ever since. Sara is the Founder and Marketing Director at eTobb. eTobb, connects patients and doctors anywhere & anytime in the MENA region.

Radwa Rostom is a civil engineer with more than five years working experience. Rostom graduated from Ain Shams University in 2009, she worked for two years as a structural engineer in an aluminum structures company. Having the passion for sustainability and community development, she shifted her career three years ago to work in the field of energy efficiency and energy management in an environmental consulting firm. Rostom currently works as a Training & CSR Specialist in the Solar Energy Co., she is also working as a business developer in WeForest Organization. She founded Hand Over a social enterprise that seeks to provide sustainable, resilient and affordable housing units for low-income families by empowering architecture and civil engineering students/graduates along with the local residents and jointly they will design and implement sustainable housing units for the local families. Rostom was selected by the “Arabian Business” Magazine as number 30 out of the 100 most powerful young Arabs under 40 in 2015.

Lama-Yasmin Tawk holds a bachelor in landscape design and ecosystem management and an MSc in ecosystem management. She is an active freelance landscape architect in the MENA region since 2007. She is also, the coordinator of the participatory mapping project entitled ‘biodiversity village award’ at the Nature Conservation Center at the American University of Beirut. Since 2011, Tawk has designing and conducted participatory mapping exercises in 70 villages in Lebanon. The Biodiversity Village Award (BVA) annually engages town communities in a process that seeks to collect ecological, social, cultural, and economic information about their town and display it on a map accessible to the public. Using the BVA results, Tawk and her team are creating a digital platform that gives urban residents living in dense cities access to green spaces.

Yasmeen’s 10 years in the Petroleum sector concreted her understanding of the lack of energy problem in Egypt. Yasmeen's corporate planning, process streamlining, and local sales experience drew her key role in RENEW, her waste to energy start-up, as a Resource Planning and Marketing head. Her MBA and friction with the booming entrepreneurial scene in Egypt boosted her enthusiasm to design RENEW's business model that attracted several investors to it. Yasmeen is a chemical engineer. She is a mother of two and looks forward to bringing them up in an Egypt that is utilizing its alternative energy potential.

Amira Rashad is the Head of Brand Advertising at Facebook Middle East, North Africa and Pakistan. She has 20+ years of experience across the media, consumer and technology sectors. She has advised Fortune 500 companies, governments and non for profit organizations as a senior consultant with Booz Allen Hamilton, and led teams at PepsiCo, Yahoo, Dun & Bradstreet, and Leo Burnett Advertising, in the U.S., Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia. Amira holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, and is s a UK Foreign Office Chevening scholar. She is a board member of TechWadi in Silicone Valley, and a regular speaker at major regional events on digital media and women's issues.

Talan is the Founder and CEO of EMP Company Ltd., one of Iraq's largest companies established in 2007 that is focused on professional recruitment, payroll management, event management and real-estate management. Talan is one of the very first business women in Kurdistan and Iraq. Talan’s previous positions were the followings: Official Representative in Iraqi Kurdistan Region of the Italian Embassy in Baghdad, 2008-2013; Resource Center Director at USAID/ America's Development Foundation, 2005-2006; Grants Manager at USAID/RTI, 2004-2005; Senior Program Assistant at UNICEF, 2000-2003. Her Education/Certificates are Bachelor of Art, Electrical Engineering, Salahaddin University, 1998; Alumni, Stanford University-California, 2006 summer fellowship program; Alumni, Harvard Kennedy School-Boston, Women's Leadership Program for Entrepreneurs for MENA region, 2015.

Aurore Belfrage is a tech entrepreneur, angle investor, startup coach, news junkie, social media marketer, speechwriter, ex-scrap dealer, aubergine lover & a West Wing fan. Aurore started her operational career as a scrap dealer in Stena Metall Group where she was managing director for the Czech and Italian scrap yards. For the past 8 years Aurore has been working from London, Middle East, Stockholm and Silicon Valley with digital marketing, international tech startups and social media. She co-founded the global giftcard startup Wrapp with Skype founder Zennström and Linkedin founder Reid Hoffman as early investors. Global brands as well as startup entrepreneurs belong to Aurore’s on-going advisory and coaching clients. The last 2 years she has partnered with the acclaimed Middle East current affairs site Your Middle East. Aurore managed, moderated and monetized their successful 10-city, no-nonsense MENA road show about startups and entrepreneurship “Saluting the Crazy and Naïve”. Read all about her thoughts on startups and follow her work on her blog iAubergine.

Christina is leading TechWadi's new "MENA-forward" model of engagement by developing strategic partnerships in Silicon Valley and the MENA region to promote high-quality mentorship, immersion, and acceleration opportunities that will help grow and scale the MENA tech ecosystem. Passionate about social capital and community engagement, Christina comes to TechWadi with background in outreach and association-building. Previously, she worked on economic development and education projects primarily in the MENA region, with both Relief International and the Small Enterprise Education and Promotion (SEEP) Network. Christina hold a M.Sc. in Democracy and Institutions from the University of London (UCL), and a B.A. in Comparative Politics from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Rolf Behrndt is the Practice Manager for the joint IFC-IBRD Global Practice Finance & Markets at the World Bank. Rolf is based in Moscow, responsible for providing finance, advisory and convening services in Europe and Central Asia, Middle East and North Africa. Clients include Governments, Central Banks, and sectoral organizations. He has been with the WBG for > 9 years, has more than 25 years of experience in the financial sector, and has focused on financial infrastructure, financial inclusion, and finance for development (agri-finance, sustainable energy finance), as also advisory services for banks and microfinance institutions. Rolf holds a master’s degree in industrial economics from Darmstadt University, Germany, and conducted postgraduate studies at the German Development Institute. Apart from two years in a regional development bank in Africa, he has worked most of his career in EMENA, especially the CIS, and speaks fluent Russian.

Juan Jose joined IE Business School in March 2010 as President of the International Center for Entrepreneurial Management after seventeen years of intense political activity. He had previously served in a broad range of government departments, including tourism, finance and employment, gender policies, and health. Güemes holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics and Business Administration (Universidad Complutense, Madrid, 1992) and a Master in Financial Markets (Universidad San Pablo CEU, Madrid, 1993). He began his career as an analyst at the Bank of Spain in 1991, before serving as Economic Adviser to Spain’s Popular Party in the Spanish Parliament from 1993 to 1996.

John is currently Director of Finance and Business Development at A-List Education, a venture that provides a suite of unique college education products and services. Mr. Walker was previously Consulting Director of Finance at Echoing Green, where in addition to managing the organization's financial systems he also led all impact investing activities, developing the Recoverable Grant investment concept and leading the structuring of the partnership with The Social Entrepreneurs’ Fund, a venture investment fund focused on financing capital for expansion. Mr. Walker lectures on impact investing at Columbia Business School and at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. He advises a number of start-up social businesses, focusing on early-stage business and investment strategy.

Mouna Couzi is the Country Operations Officer for Lebanon in the Mashreq Department, based in Beirut. Prior to joining the Bank in January 2000, she worked for almost 5 years in the Treasury and Financial Department of Solidere s.a.l., the Lebanese company in charge of planning and redeveloping Beirut Central District following the end of the country’s civil war in 1990. From 1988 to 1993, she worked in DCC Plc, a venture capital and corporate finance company, also based in Dublin. Ms. Couzi holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honors) from University College Dublin, an Advanced Diploma in Financial Services from the Institute of Commercial Management in the UK, in addition to a Master’s Degree in Public Governance in the Euro-Arab Region from Universidad de Granada.

Photo Gallery of the Event