10 Egyptians on Forbes Powerful Businesswomen List

Yara Sameh

Forbes Middle East has unveiled its 100 Power Businesswomen in the Middle East 2020 list, which featured 10 Egyptians, on its annual ranking of powerful and inspirational women in the Middle East.

About 22 new entries and 23 nationalities are represented from across 28 sectors in the list, where Emirati are the most prevalent nationality with 23 entries.

Also, eight Lebanese and Omani women have also been listed.

Furthermore, Saudis dominated the Top 10 list with three of the country’s biggest names in the top five.

Moreover, British women have prevailed on the non-Arabs, with seven entries.

Forbes cited that the list was constructed through nominations and in-depth research, which was based on criteria that included the size of the businesses that these women head, their accomplishments over the last year, the initiatives they champion, and their overall work experience.

It has found that 79 out of the 100 women are self-made, 16 of whom have started their own businesses, while 21 others work in their family businesses, with many of them starting out when it was rare to find women in the workplace.

Meet Egypt's most powerful businesswomen in the Middle East:

Rank#24 Mona Zulficar, Zulficar & Partners founding partner and EFG Hermes chairperson

Rank#31: Pakinam Kafafi, CEO of Taqa Arabia

Rank#33: Elham Mahfouz, CEO of Commercial Bank of Kuwait

Rank#40: Yasmine and Farida Khamis, Oriental Weavers

Rank#53: Hend El Sherbini, CEO of LSE-listed IDH

Rank#60: Mervat Zohdy El Sayed Soltan, chairperson of the Export Development Bank of Egypt

Rank#69: Reem Asaad, Middle East and Africa vice president at CISCO

Rank#75: Hoda Mansour, managing director of SAP Egypt

Rank#81: Abir Lehita, CEO of Egytrans

Rank#92: Noha El Ghazaly, managing director of Pharos Holding.

The full list can be found here.