Emirati Women's Day Special: Women Icons Driving Innovation and Leadership in 2026

Malika AlHashimi

The future of the Gulf is being shaped by leaders who understand that innovation is not simply about adopting new technologies, it is about creating ecosystems where collaboration, trust, and purpose come together to deliver lasting impact. As the UAE continues to strengthen its position as a global hub for digital transformation, financial innovation, and sustainable development, visionary women are playing an increasingly influential role in driving this progress. Among them is Malika AlHashimi, whose career reflects a remarkable blend of strategic leadership, industry expertise, and an unwavering commitment to building meaningful partnerships that create value across sectors.

With more than two decades of experience spanning banking, payments, fintech, and strategic advisory, Malika has consistently been at the forefront of innovation within the UAE's financial landscape. Her professional journey has been guided by a clear vision: leveraging technology and collaboration to transform industries while contributing to long-term economic and societal growth. Through every stage of her career, she has demonstrated that successful leadership is rooted not only in expertise but also in the ability to connect people, organizations, and ideas to achieve shared goals.

Malika's foundation was built within the banking industry, where she spent many years developing payment solutions, card products, and digital financial services. During this period, she played a significant role in launching innovative banking products and solutions, collaborating closely with financial institutions, government entities, and leading international payment networks. These experiences provided her with a deep understanding of the rapidly evolving financial ecosystem and reinforced the importance of partnerships in accelerating technological advancement. Working across diverse stakeholders also enabled her to appreciate the balance required between innovation, regulation, and customer trust, an understanding that continues to shape her leadership today.

Her extensive industry experience eventually led her to establish Malika Innovation, where she now serves as Founder and CEO. Through the firm, she advises governments, financial institutions, and technology companies on payment transformation, fintech strategy, digital ecosystems, and strategic partnerships. Her work focuses on bridging international technology providers with opportunities throughout the UAE and the wider MENA region, helping organizations develop future-ready solutions that are both innovative and sustainable. By connecting global expertise with regional ambitions, Malika has positioned her company as a trusted advisor in an increasingly dynamic digital economy.

One of the defining highlights of her career has been her contribution to large-scale government and national payment initiatives. These projects require not only technical expertise but also the ability to align diverse stakeholder interests while ensuring measurable outcomes for businesses, governments, and citizens alike. For Malika, technology alone is never the ultimate objective. Instead, she believes genuine transformation is achieved by building trusted partnerships, creating strategic alignment, and delivering long-term value that extends well beyond the implementation of digital solutions. This philosophy has become a hallmark of her professional approach and continues to distinguish her work across every engagement.

Like many pioneers working in rapidly evolving industries, Malika's journey has been shaped by challenges that demanded resilience and adaptability. Entering emerging sectors often meant navigating uncertainty, earning the confidence of stakeholders, and continuously demonstrating the value of new ideas. Expanding strategic partnerships across international markets also required cultural understanding, persistence, and an ability to build lasting relationships based on mutual trust. Rather than viewing these experiences as setbacks, she embraced them as opportunities to grow, refine her leadership, and strengthen her ability to create meaningful impact.

Among the accomplishments she values most is establishing Malika Innovation as a respected strategic advisory firm while cultivating partnerships with leading global organizations across fintech, payments, artificial intelligence, and renewable energy. Her interests extend beyond financial technology into sustainability through Green Net Zero, an initiative dedicated to supporting renewable energy partnerships throughout the MENA region. This reflects her belief that the future belongs to organizations capable of integrating digital innovation with environmental responsibility. By encouraging collaboration between technology and sustainability, she continues to contribute to conversations that will shape the region's long-term development.

Continuous learning has remained central to Malika's professional philosophy. Recognizing the pace at which technology continues to evolve, she has pursued professional certifications in fintech while consistently expanding her knowledge of artificial intelligence, digital transformation, emerging technologies, and sustainable development. Her commitment to lifelong learning reflects her conviction that curiosity and adaptability are among the most valuable qualities any leader can possess in an increasingly complex global environment.

Beyond her professional achievements, Malika remains passionate about inspiring the next generation of innovators and business leaders. She encourages aspiring professionals to remain committed to continuous learning, cultivate genuine relationships, and stay focused on creating meaningful value rather than pursuing recognition alone. In her view, lasting success is built through integrity, consistency, resilience, and the courage to embrace change, even when the path forward is uncertain. By surrounding themselves with inspiring people and remaining open to new opportunities, future leaders can position themselves to make a meaningful difference in their industries and communities.

As the UAE celebrates women whose leadership continues to shape the nation's future, Malika AlHashimi stands as an inspiring example of how vision, collaboration, and purpose can drive meaningful transformation. Through her work across fintech, strategic partnerships, artificial intelligence, and sustainability, she continues to connect ideas with opportunities that strengthen both businesses and society. Her journey reflects the spirit of innovation that defines the UAE today while reinforcing the belief that the most impactful leaders are those who build bridges between technology, people, and purpose to create a more sustainable, inclusive, and digitally empowered future. 

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Hari Carpenter

Leadership in today's global business environment is increasingly defined by the ability to build trust, create meaningful connections, and shape narratives that resonate across cultures. As the UAE continues to strengthen its position as a global centre for innovation, finance, and entrepreneurship, women leaders are playing a vital role in elevating the country's presence on the international stage. Among them is Hari Carpenter, whose strategic vision and disciplined approach to brand building are helping position one of the region's fastest-growing fintech companies for global recognition.

As Head of Brand at Equiti Group, Hari leads brand strategy for the Dubai-headquartered, multi-regulated global fintech that provides advanced trading technology, payment software, virtual assets, asset management, and physical commodity solutions. Her work is built on a straightforward philosophy: in an industry that trades on trust, a brand has to earn attention through data-driven creativity before it can ask for confidence.

Born in Hong Kong, raised in Singapore, and educated at the University of Warwick, Hari began her career in Singapore's advertising industry. She joined manghamgaxiola mcgarrybowen as an intern and progressed to managing her own team within just two years, leading integrated campaigns across print, outdoor, digital, television, and radio for brands including Intel, CIMB, BlackRock, Lexus, Subaru, Porsche, and Singapore Zoo. She later joined BBH Singapore during one of the agency's most celebrated periods, before spending several years writing and developing brand strategies across three continents while working with internationally recognised names such as Johnnie Walker, Hennessy, Tanqueray, Tiger, Heineken, Kirin, Singha, and Diageo World Class.

Hari joined Equiti in London in 2021, where one of her earliest major responsibilities was supporting the group's launch into the UAE market. The project established the principle she continues to follow today: earn the licence, then earn a place in people's daily lives. While Equiti became one of the first global brokers to receive a Category One licence for over-the-counter derivatives and currencies from the UAE Securities and Commodities Authority, Hari focused on ensuring the brand established long-term recognition beyond regulatory success.

One of the most distinctive examples of this philosophy was Equiti's ten-year naming rights partnership for the Equiti Metro Station in Dubai. For Hari, the initiative was never about immediate clicks or short-term conversions. Instead, she believed that not every piece of advertising requires a call to action; some simply need to become part of everyday life. Serving more than 225 million passengers annually, the metro station transformed Equiti into a permanent landmark within the city while giving the wider brand campaign a lasting point of reference built on familiarity and trust.

In January 2024, Hari relocated to Equiti's Dubai headquarters to lead global digital communications across Europe, Latin America, and the MENA region. Just a few months later, she was appointed Head of Brand, where she built a global in-house creative team. Under her leadership, brand awareness increased by 550 percent while website traffic grew by 875 percent in less than three years, achievements delivered entirely through internal capabilities. In November 2025, Equiti was recognised as a UAE Superbrand, joining a select group of the nation's most trusted brands.

Today, Hari's work is focused on building brand architecture at scale for a global fintech group, grounded in qualitative and quantitative consumer research across Equiti's international markets. Her team studies how a new generation across the UAE and beyond thinks about investing, ownership, and financial risk, ensuring the brand evolves alongside changing consumer behaviour rather than simply reacting to market trends.

That same long-term thinking is reflected in Equiti's commitment to community investment across the Emirates. The company's partnerships with Al Wahda FC, the Equiti Polo Club, the Equiti Youth Football League, and Dubai Basketball demonstrate its belief in supporting future talent. Hari's approach to these partnerships has always been guided by narrative rather than audience size. Dubai Basketball's historic journey into the EuroLeague mirrors the same ambition that has driven both Equiti's international expansion and the UAE's emergence as a global business destination.

Beyond business performance, Hari is equally invested in the people behind the work, mentoring through structured coaching, hiring for curiosity as readily as technical expertise, and championing a communication style built on clarity, restraint, and evidence rather than unnecessary superlatives. Away from the office, she is a linocut printmaker, analogue photographer, surfer, and hiker, while continuing to support humanitarian and environmental conservation initiatives that have remained close to her heart since 2009.

As the UAE continues to inspire innovation and global business excellence, Hari Carpenter represents a generation of brand leaders focused not simply on awareness, but on building brands that are understood, trusted, and remembered. Through disciplined storytelling, community-first partnerships, and research-led strategy, she continues to shape how a Middle Eastern fintech introduces itself to the world while reflecting the ambition, innovation, and leadership that define the spirit of the Emirates. 

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Sarah Varghese

The world's most remarkable cities are rarely shaped by chance. Behind thriving urban landscapes are visionary professionals who understand that successful places are intentionally crafted through thoughtful planning, inclusive leadership, and a deep understanding of people. Sarah Varghese, a Global City Strategist, Executive Leader, and Author, has spent more than three decades turning that philosophy into reality, building an international career that spans architecture, urban strategy, city planning, executive leadership, and thought leadership across the Middle East, Australia, India, the United Kingdom, and Africa.

Her journey is defined by curiosity as much as expertise. Growing up between India and Africa in an expatriate family, Sarah experienced different cultures, educational systems, and communities from an early age. Rather than seeing constant change as a challenge, she embraced every new environment as an opportunity to learn. Those formative experiences nurtured an open mindset, an appreciation for cultural diversity, and a natural ability to connect with people from varied backgrounds, qualities that continue to influence both her leadership philosophy and professional success.

Travel also played a defining role in shaping her ambitions. Visiting cities across continents sparked questions that would eventually determine her career path. She became fascinated by why some cities create a strong sense of belonging while others struggle to connect with the people who live in them. Initially drawn to architecture because of its blend of creativity and functionality, Sarah soon realised that designing individual buildings was only one part of a much larger story. Her real passion lay in understanding how entire systems and communities function and how meticulous planning can improve quality of life for generations.

This perspective was evident even during her academic years when her final-year architectural thesis focused on creating a sustainable community rather than a standalone iconic building which was the standard norm. Shortly after beginning her career as an architect, she chose to broaden her expertise by pursuing a Master's degree in Urban Design in the United Kingdom through a full scholarship. That experience introduced her to city-scale thinking and reinforced her belief that successful urban environments must balance economic growth, design excellence, environmental responsibility, and the wellbeing of the people they serve.

Throughout her career, Sarah has worked with governments and leading private-sector organisations on city strategies, regeneration programmes, growth frameworks, and large-scale urban transformation initiatives. As a Global City Strategist and Executive Leader, her work has consistently centred on creating places that are economically vibrant, environmentally sustainable, and socially inclusive. While many people experience the benefits of well-planned cities every day through accessible transport, public spaces, housing, and community infrastructure, Sarah believes few realise the level of strategic thinking required to make these systems work seamlessly together.

One principle has remained constant across every project she has undertaken: people must always come before plans. Technical expertise may provide direction, but lasting transformation only becomes possible when communities, stakeholders, and decision-makers work together. Sarah has built a reputation for bringing diverse groups around a shared vision, fostering trust, encouraging collaboration, and helping organisations navigate complex challenges with confidence. Her approach demonstrates that successful city planning is ultimately about understanding people just as much as understanding places.

Another distinguishing aspect of her leadership is her commitment to empowering others. Rather than simply delivering recommendations, Sarah focuses on strengthening the capabilities of the teams she works alongside. By sharing knowledge, mentoring professionals, and embedding practical skills within organisations, she ensures that the impact of her work continues long after individual projects are completed. This emphasis on collaboration and continuous learning has earned her the trust of clients and colleagues across multiple countries and sectors.

Leadership, for Sarah, extends well beyond project delivery. For nearly two decades, she has invested significant time in developing high-performing teams built on trust, accountability, and shared purpose. She believes that organisations achieve exceptional outcomes when individuals feel valued, supported, and inspired to contribute their best. Her commitment to mentoring emerging professionals has helped many build rewarding careers, reinforcing her belief that the true measure of leadership lies in the success of the people you help grow.

Alongside her professional achievements, Sarah's role as an Author and thought leader adds another dimension to her global professional journey. Through her writing and public contributions, she shares practical insights on leadership, urban development, and the future of cities, making complex planning concepts more accessible to broader audiences. Her creative interests are equally reflected in her published book, Memories of Malayali Mangas, a collection of interconnected stories inspired by the experiences of South Indian women living in Sydney. The book reveals another dimension of her personality, one that values storytelling, culture, and the shared human experiences that connect communities across borders.

Now based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Sarah continues contributing to one of the world's most ambitious urban transformation journeys while remaining committed to building sustainable cities, developing future leaders, and creating meaningful impact wherever she works. Her ability to combine international experience with local understanding, strategic thinking with empathy, and visionary leadership with practical execution has made her a trusted voice in urban development.

Sarah Varghese's career serves as a powerful reminder that cities are ultimately built for people. Across her journey as a Global City Strategist, Executive Leader, and Author, she has consistently brought together vision, collaboration, and a long-term commitment to creating places where communities can flourish. Through her work, she continues to demonstrate that the most meaningful legacy is not simply the cities we shape, but the lives we positively influence along the way. 

Sarah Varghese is proudly featured in GulfArticles' "Emirati Women's Day Special: Women Icons Driving Innovation and Leadership in 2026," a special edition inspired by Emirati Women's Day and celebrating accomplished women whose leadership, innovation, and vision are contributing to the progress of the Gulf region and beyond.

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Salomé Germain Trigano

The strongest organisations are not simply those that bring different people together, but those that create the conditions for every individual to contribute, grow, and succeed. This understanding sits at the heart of Salomé Germain Trigano’s work and has shaped a career that brings together business strategy, gender balance, inclusive leadership, talent development, and organisational transformation.

Based in Abu Dhabi, Salomé is the Founder of Arba Advisory, where she works with private companies, public institutions, and governmental entities across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Her focus goes beyond viewing diversity and inclusion as a matter of representation alone. Instead, she approaches inclusion as a strategic lever for attracting and retaining talent, strengthening leadership, encouraging innovation, and building organisations where people from different backgrounds can perform at their best.

Her perspective has been shaped by a distinctly international and multidisciplinary journey. Salomé studied management and finance at Université Paris Dauphine and later completed a master’s degree in Energy Management at ESCP Europe. Her professional path took her through financial control, business development, competitive intelligence, energy markets, and strategy before her work became increasingly centred on gender balance and organisational inclusion. She has since further developed her expertise through INSEAD’s Advancing Diversity & Inclusion programme and professional certifications in diversity, inclusion, gender balance, and participatory gender auditing.

Those earlier chapters continue to influence the way she approaches her work today. At Jivana Vitality India, she helped lead the opening of a drinking water treatment plant, coordinating the project, working with local authorities, and developing partnerships with NGOs. At Air Liquide, she conducted strategic market analyses and developed financial and competitive benchmarking tools to support executive decision-making. Her experience at S&P Global Platts added another dimension, immersing her in European oil markets and connecting her with traders, brokers, and analysts across the energy sector.

Her transition towards gender balance and inclusive leadership became particularly significant through her work on ENGIE’s global Fifty-Fifty Gender Balance Program, an initiative targeting 50% women in management by 2030 across 35 countries and 28 business units. Salomé contributed to the rollout of the gender-balance roadmap, supported leadership and HR teams in developing action plans, prepared executive materials, and helped facilitate workshops and masterclasses on diversity, inclusion, and leadership. Working across different cultures reinforced an important principle in her approach: meaningful organisational change must respect context while remaining measurable and actionable.

She further strengthened this expertise as a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Auditor with EDGE Empower, auditing multinational organisations and analysing areas including HR data, pay equity, and employee perceptions. The experience deepened her understanding of how policies, organisational structures, and workplace experiences interact, and why sustainable inclusion requires attention to all three.

Today, that understanding is central to Arba Advisory. Salomé’s philosophy is built around the connection between cultural and structural transformation. Cultural change addresses mindsets, awareness, and leadership behaviours, while structural change examines HR systems, governance, measurement, policies, and processes. For Salomé, neither can deliver lasting progress in isolation. It is their combination that enables organisations to move beyond good intentions and create tangible, sustainable outcomes.

Through Arba Advisory, she supports organisations in areas including gender balance and women’s leadership development, inclusive leadership, recruitment and promotion practices, career progression, talent retention, intercultural collaboration, and multicultural team dynamics. The firm uses approaches ranging from strategic roadmaps and organisational diagnostics to audits, leadership training, mentoring programmes, workshops, conferences, HR process reviews, barometers, and customised e-learning.

Importantly, Salomé’s approach to diversity extends beyond gender. Arba Advisory works from an intersectional perspective that considers the many dimensions influencing an individual’s workplace experience, including nationality, disability, language, age, religion, or ethnocultural background. This broader lens reflects the reality of modern international organisations, particularly in multicultural business environments where local and international talent work side by side.

For Salomé, inclusion is ultimately about people, but it is equally connected to organisational performance. A workplace can have policies and targets on paper, yet lasting progress depends on whether people genuinely have the opportunity to develop, contribute, and build meaningful careers. Her work therefore seeks to connect people, purpose, and performance, transforming cultural differences from potential barriers into sources of collective strength.

As organisations across the UAE and the wider region continue to invest in talent, leadership, and globally competitive workplaces, Salomé’s work reflects an increasingly important dimension of organisational innovation: building environments capable of unlocking the potential of diverse people. From her base in Abu Dhabi, she continues to advance a vision in which gender balance and inclusion are not treated as isolated initiatives, but integrated into the way organisations lead, develop talent, and prepare for the future.

Through Arba Advisory, Salomé Germain Trigano is helping organisations translate inclusion from principle into practice, demonstrating that when cultural transformation and structural progress move together, diversity can become a meaningful driver of stronger leadership, sustainable performance, and lasting organisational change. 

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Fozia Mirza

Breaking the Mould, Reaching New Heights 

Some careers are carefully planned from the beginning. Others are shaped by unexpected turns, bold decisions, and the willingness to keep moving when life changes direction. Fozia Mirza’s journey belongs firmly to the latter. From volunteering and professional modelling to sales, events, and ultimately senior leadership in the maritime industry, her story reflects a woman who has repeatedly stepped beyond the familiar and turned uncertainty into opportunity.

Her belief in independence and continuous learning emerged early. At just 15, Fozia began volunteering, valuing experience and knowledge above immediate rewards. Those early experiences helped shape an outlook that would remain central throughout her career: small beginnings should never limit the scale of one’s ambitions.

Her journey soon took an unconventional turn into professional modelling. Fozia walked the runway for renowned fashion designers including Manish Malhotra and JJ Valaya, earning the Best Female Catwalk Model award at various shows. In 2009, she was also crowned Ms. UAE Talented. Although this chapter may appear far removed from the maritime boardroom, it became part of a much broader story of confidence, adaptability, and being comfortable enough to enter spaces where the outcome was never guaranteed.

Fozia later established herself in event sales, with her professional experience extending across events, production, and commercial sales. Each environment strengthened her communication skills and ability to understand people, qualities that would eventually become fundamental to her leadership style.

Then came an unexpected turning point. In 2020, amid the disruption caused by the pandemic, Fozia faced redundancy. Rather than allowing the setback to define what came next, she saw another possibility opening before her. In April 2020, she entered the shipping industry, beginning a chapter that would eventually become one of the defining parts of her professional journey.

Shipping offered precisely the kind of environment in which Fozia thrives: dynamic, demanding, relationship-driven, and rarely predictable. She describes the industry as a roller coaster, with curveballs arriving almost every day. Yet instead of resisting that unpredictability, she embraces it. Challenges give her the opportunity to think faster, learn, adapt, and find solutions.

Today, Fozia continues her leadership journey with Martrans Shipping, where her work spans sales and marketing, commercial strategy, business development, customer relationships, and market growth. Her people-focused, solution-oriented approach has contributed to an approximately 80% growth in the customer base, demonstrating the commercial value of relationships built on understanding and trust.

Her progression has also received wider recognition. Fozia was named a 2024 Business Elite 40 Under 40 Honoree in the MENA region, marking another significant milestone in a career built through persistence and reinvention.

For Fozia, however, leadership is not defined by a designation or by being the most dominant voice in a room. As she puts it, “Leadership is not about being the loudest person in the room. It is about being the person people can rely on when the room gets difficult.”

That philosophy extends to innovation. She believes meaningful innovation begins by challenging established ways of working and having the curiosity to ask, “How can we do this better?” Equally important is her conviction that learning must never stop. In her view, becoming too comfortable can easily become an obstacle to growth.

Her journey carries particular resonance for women navigating industries where leadership has traditionally been male-dominated. Fozia believes women should not wait for permission to lead or feel compelled to conform to a predefined idea of what success should look like. “You don't have to fit into the mould to succeed. Sometimes you have to break the mould and build your own.”

Looking ahead, her vision reaches beyond personal accomplishments. Fozia intends to continue building businesses, creating meaningful relationships, solving problems, and embracing innovation, while encouraging others, especially women, to believe in their abilities, become independent, take chances, and create opportunities of their own. She believes people do not need to have everything figured out before beginning; sometimes courage simply means taking the first step.

At the heart of that vision is her belief in reinvention. Circumstances may influence a person's journey, but they do not have to determine the destination. Setbacks, disappointments, and unexpected curveballs can either become limitations or lessons. Fozia has consistently chosen the latter.

She calls it her “reaching-the-heights-and-beyond attitude.” Every time she reaches one height, another question follows: What’s next?

That question perhaps captures Fozia Mirza’s journey better than any title or accolade could. She has challenged the odds, navigated unexpected turns, and continually expanded what she believed possible. And as she looks towards the next chapter, her story offers a powerful reminder to other women: where you begin may shape your story, but it never has to determine how far you can go.

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Neethu Paul

For Neethu Paul, the biggest challenge facing businesses today is rarely a shortage of ideas. It is the gap between ambition and execution. Strategies are created, transformation programmes are announced, and new technologies are adopted. Yet somewhere between the boardroom and the market, momentum can be lost.

It is a gap Neethu has spent more than two decades learning how to close.

A marketing and growth strategist, entrepreneur, and Co-Founder of EZER Global, Neethu has built her career at the intersection of strategy, execution, and commercial growth. Her experience spans global organisations including Microsoft, Autodesk, Epicor, and ServiceNow, with work across markets, industries, and cultures.

What distinguishes her approach is the ability to connect strategic conversations at the leadership level with the realities of making those strategies work in the market.

“I have always been fascinated by the space between a great idea and a great outcome,” she says. “Businesses rarely struggle because they have no ideas. The challenge is turning those ideas into coordinated, measurable action.”

Rather than viewing marketing simply as campaigns, communications, or brand building, Neethu sees it as a commercial growth function that must ultimately connect to customers, sales, revenue, and measurable business outcomes. Her career has included high-performing account-based marketing initiatives, significant marketing-influenced pipeline, and large-scale regional and global programmes. She has built operating models, aligned marketing and sales teams, led go-to-market initiatives, and helped translate global strategies into meaningful action across diverse markets.

This experience has also influenced her view of modern leadership. Neethu believes impactful leaders increasingly need to look beyond individual functions and understand how different parts of a business connect.

“The future belongs to people who can connect the dots,” she says. “You need to understand the customer, the commercial model, the data, the technology and the people responsible for execution. It’s about seeing the bigger picture, understanding how the pieces influence one another, and bringing them together to move the business forward.”

After more than two decades in corporate and global marketing environments, Neethu moved into entrepreneurship, co-founding EZER Global, a strategic growth and marketing advisory. The decision emerged from something she had repeatedly observed: businesses often know where they want to go but may lack the strategic leadership, specialist capability, or execution bandwidth required to get there.

Today, EZER works with organisations at different stages of growth, from international businesses navigating expansion and transformation to startups developing their foundations and market presence. Its model combines strategic advisory, fractional marketing leadership, and execution capability, giving organisations access to experienced leadership without separating strategy from delivery.

“Businesses are becoming more agile in how they access expertise,” Neethu explains. “You may not need every capability permanently inside the organisation. What matters is having the right expertise at the right level, at the right moment, and being able to translate that expertise into momentum.”

Working with startups and growing businesses is particularly important to her. Having experienced mature marketing engines, operating disciplines, and go-to-market structures within global organisations, she now brings the most relevant elements of that knowledge to founders working with different resources and realities.

The objective, however, is not to impose corporate complexity. As she explains, “You don’t need to recreate a large corporation to build a successful company. You take the disciplines that work, remove the complexity that doesn’t, and build for the business you want to become.”

That can involve sharpening positioning, determining where limited resources can create the greatest commercial impact, developing go-to-market strategies, building visibility, and establishing foundations for scale. For Neethu, helping businesses progress from strong ideas to commercially sustainable propositions has become one of entrepreneurship’s most rewarding aspects.

The UAE has also played an important role in her journey. Having called the country home for many years while building a career across international markets, Neethu has developed professionally alongside a highly ambitious and multicultural business environment.

“You are constantly working across cultures, industries, generations and different stages of business maturity here,” she says. “It teaches you to adapt, to listen and never to assume that what worked somewhere else will automatically work here.”

This combination of global exposure and regional understanding informs her belief that strategies must be grounded in the realities of individual markets and the people they aim to reach. She sees the UAE’s ability to bring together global companies, entrepreneurs, investors, startups, and emerging technologies as particularly powerful, a place where ambition is frequently followed by action.

That distinction extends to her perspective on artificial intelligence. While AI and automation increasingly feature in her approach to marketing and business transformation, Neethu does not consider technology adoption alone to be innovation.

“AI can dramatically increase the speed of execution,” she says. “But speed without clarity simply gets you to the wrong destination faster.”

For Neethu, technology is most valuable when it removes friction, accelerates analysis, improves decision-making, and enables people to focus on areas where human judgment, creativity, and connection matter most. Innovation can equally involve challenging outdated processes, connecting fragmented information, improving how businesses reach customers, or questioning established ways of working. The common thread is a willingness to evolve.

Her recognition as one of the Women Leaders to Watch in 2025 and among the Middle East’s Most Influential Business Leaders to Watch in 2026 reflects a journey increasingly defined by the perspective and impact she brings to business.

Today, through EZER Global, Neethu is applying more than two decades of experience to advising established organisations, supporting ambitious companies and founders, and connecting strategic thinking with execution. Her ability to “connect the dots”, between strategy and action, global thinking and local realities, and technology and human judgment, continues to define her approach.

As the UAE celebrates women contributing to its continued growth and ambition, Neethu Paul's journey makes her a fitting presence in GulfArticles' “Emirati Women's Day Special: Women Icons Driving Innovation and Leadership in 2026,” a special edition inspired by the occasion and recognising accomplished women contributing to the UAE and wider Gulf's evolving business landscape.

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Nisha Sanghani

Leadership is most valuable when it brings clarity to complexity - and creates the confidence to do things differently. Across the Middle East, ambitious economic agendas, technological disruption and rapid transformation are reshaping how businesses operate. Nisha Sanghani has built her career at this intersection: helping organisations navigate complexity while building businesses and solutions designed for what comes next.

With more than two decades of consulting, commercial and entrepreneurial experience, Nisha’s career spans risk management, corporate governance, regulatory transformation and business strategy. Today, as Partner and Head of Risk Advisory Middle East at Ashurst Perkins Coie, she leads Ashurst Perkins Coie Risk Advisory across the region.

Entrepreneurship has been a consistent thread throughout her career. Nisha co-founded and spent more than a decade building Rosediem Consulting, which was recognised as the UK’s “Best Specialist Financial Regulatory Consulting Firm.” During this period, she was also named one of the UK’s Top 20 Dynamic CEOs. Her wider career includes senior roles at KPMG UK, a global investment bank and a FTSE 250-listed wealth manager, giving her the perspective of founder, adviser and executive.

In 2022, Nisha became a founding partner of Ashurst Risk Advisory UK, helping to build the firm’s consulting business. Less than two years later, she relocated to the UAE to do it again - this time building Ashurst Perkins Coie Risk Advisory’s Middle East practice from the ground up.

The model is deliberately different. Ashurst Perkins Coie is the only international law firm in the Middle East offering standalone consulting services alongside its legal capabilities, allowing clients to access each independently or through integrated multidisciplinary teams.

Under Nisha’s leadership, Ashurst Perkins Coie Risk Advisory’s work in the region spans corporate governance, enterprise risk, regulatory transformation, crisis and resilience, technology and AI, geopolitical risk and complex business transformation. Rather than replicating a traditional consulting model, the business brings together senior practitioners across disciplines to tackle challenges that increasingly cut across conventional professional boundaries.

That approach reflects Nisha’s broader view of innovation. For her, innovation is not confined to new technology or products. It is about challenging established ways of working, creating new business models and finding better ways to solve difficult problems.

It is a philosophy that has characterised her career. From founding her own consultancy to building businesses within Ashurst Perkins Coie, Nisha has repeatedly gravitated towards creating something new. She also continues to support entrepreneurs, founders and emerging businesses, applying her experience in governance, risk and business building to the next generation of companies.

Her vision is closely connected to the extraordinary transformation taking place across the Middle East. As governments pursue ambitious national agendas and capital flows into new industries and technologies, Nisha believes progressive governance, technological advancement and sophisticated risk management can become powerful drivers of competitive advantage - enabling organisations to innovate, grow and navigate change with greater confidence.

Her influence extends beyond Ashurst Perkins Coie. Nisha serves on the Global Corporate Governance Committee of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW), contributing to wider thinking on the future of corporate governance and best practice.

Her journey is also a reminder that innovation is not only about inventing the next technology. It can mean building new businesses, challenging established professional models and creating better ways of working.

As the Middle East continues its economic transformation, leaders able to connect international experience with regional ambition will play an increasingly important role. Nisha’s career has been shaped by that combination. From entrepreneur to executive, adviser and business builder, the common thread is a willingness not simply to navigate change - but to create through it.  

• LinkedIn - Nisha Sanghani 

Charu Surtani

In today’s increasingly interconnected business landscape, influential leaders are those who can identify opportunities beyond borders and create meaningful connections between markets, people and ideas. Charu Surtani has built her professional journey around this very capability.

With over three decades of entrepreneurial and professional experience, Charu has developed a diverse career spanning travel and tourism, MICE and events, entrepreneurship, business development, strategic management and international expansion. Her expertise lies in identifying growth opportunities, building strategic partnerships and transforming ideas into successful ventures across markets and geographies.

Today, as Founder and CEO of Travel Tricks and Founder and CEO of Kreative Konnections, Charu brings together extensive experience across Asian markets with a growing presence in the Middle East. Based in Dubai while maintaining strong professional connections with Hong Kong, her leadership is shaped by adaptability, relationship-building, creativity and a continuous drive to explore new opportunities.

Travel and events have remained central to her journey, but her perspective extends beyond destinations. For Charu, travel is a powerful platform for understanding cultures, connecting people, developing relationships and discovering new possibilities.

Through Travel Tricks, she has built a destination management business offering comprehensive solutions across MICE, corporate and themed events, team-building programmes, and inbound and outbound travel. Working alongside an extensive network of global travel and destination partners, Charu has successfully delivered projects and curated experiences for leading corporate organisations, including Tata Motors, Mankind Pharma, Birla Hero Motors, Fullerton Bank and Asian Paints.

Her entrepreneurial vision expanded further with the establishment of Kreative Konnections in 2022, with a presence in Dubai and Hong Kong. Inspired by her own experience of entering and expanding within new international markets, the venture was created to support businesses navigating the complexities of cross-border growth.

Today, Kreative Konnections provides bespoke, end-to-end consultancy for brands, entrepreneurs and organisations seeking to establish or expand their presence across Asia and the Middle East. Its expertise spans market entry, business development, sales strategy, brand positioning, strategic partnerships, events and curated lifestyle experiences.

Positioned as a “360° Experience Orchestrator,” Kreative Konnections operates across three interconnected pillars: Events, Consulting and Lifestyle. Combining market intelligence, strategic networks, creativity, cultural understanding and hands-on execution, the platform creates commercially relevant solutions while building meaningful connections across industries and borders.

Continuous learning remains an important part of Charu’s professional philosophy. Alongside her practical entrepreneurial experience, she pursued a GMPe in Business Administration and Management at the Indian Institute of Management Indore in 2026 and continues to strengthen her expertise in areas including artificial intelligence, consultancy, business development and event management.

Her contributions have also received industry recognition, including an Entrepreneurial Excellence Award and recognition as a winner at the World MICE Awards™ for Best MICE Organizer. These achievements complement a career defined by the ability to integrate business strategy, travel, events, creativity and relationship-building.

As the GCC continues to strengthen its position as a global centre for business, tourism, entrepreneurship and international collaboration, Charu’s cross-market experience has become increasingly relevant. From Dubai, she continues to build bridges between the Middle East, Asia and other international markets, identifying opportunities, developing strategic partnerships and creating platforms for meaningful collaboration.

As GulfArticles celebrates women driving innovation and leadership in 2026, Charu Surtani’s journey reflects a leadership style shaped by international perspective, entrepreneurial curiosity and purposeful connection. From Hong Kong to Dubai, her story demonstrates the power of building bridges, between markets, cultures, ideas and opportunities, and the vision to continually explore what comes next.

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Dr. Elnora Rose Celis

The most meaningful careers are not always defined by a single profession. Sometimes, they are shaped by the courage to evolve, explore new possibilities, and transform every chapter of experience into an opportunity to create greater impact. Dr. Elnora Rose Celis embodies this kind of multidimensional leadership, building a remarkable journey that brings together education, psychology, entrepreneurship, media, fashion, performing arts, talent development, and women’s empowerment.

Based in the UAE, Elnora has spent years working with students, educators, professionals, and diverse communities. Her foundation in psychology and education has profoundly influenced the way she approaches leadership. For her, leadership is not simply about authority or position; it is about the ability to influence lives positively, inspire personal growth, and help people recognize the potential within themselves.

Her academic journey reflects her lifelong commitment to understanding both people and institutions. With advanced studies spanning Clinical Psychology, Educational Administration and Supervision, and Education Management, she has consistently translated academic knowledge into practical leadership. Her professional experience includes serving as a school principal and school psychologist, taking on senior academic leadership responsibilities, and working as a Clinical Psychologist and Psychotherapist. She has also taught Psychology at the university level for more than a decade.

These experiences have given Elnora a perspective that extends far beyond conventional definitions of professional success. Working closely with people at different stages of their lives has deepened her understanding of confidence, identity, emotional growth, resilience, and the importance of creating environments where individuals feel empowered to move forward.

Over the years, that philosophy has taken her beyond education and psychology and into creative and entrepreneurial spaces. Through Elnora Maison, she explores fashion not merely as an expression of style, but as a language of confidence, identity, and transformation. Her work reflects a belief that the way people see themselves can influence the way they carry themselves and participate confidently in the world around them.

Her involvement in media, entertainment, casting, and talent development has further expanded this mission. Through Rich Talent Vision, where she has held executive leadership responsibilities, Elnora has been involved in creating opportunities for aspiring talents and helping individuals explore careers in media, film, modeling, entertainment, and pageantry.

Her background as a performing artist and stage director, spanning more than 15 years, has also allowed her to experience the creative industry from both sides of the stage, as a leader and as a performer. This combination has strengthened her ability to understand not only talent, but also the discipline, confidence, mentorship, and opportunities required to help talent flourish.

Her journey onto international platforms has added another dimension to her public presence. As Mrs. Grand International Tourism Ambassador 2025, she has embraced visibility not simply as recognition, but as a platform to represent women, culture, resilience, and meaningful human connection.

For Elnora, a title becomes truly valuable when it can be transformed into an opportunity to encourage another person to believe more strongly in what is possible for their own life.

This philosophy is particularly evident in her advocacy for women. She believes women should never feel confined to a single identity or one definition of achievement. A woman can be an educator and an entrepreneur, a professional and a creative, a mentor and a lifelong learner. She can reinvent herself without abandoning the experiences that shaped her.

Reinvention, in Elnora’s view, is not about leaving the past behind. It is about allowing every experience, both the victories and the challenges, to become the foundation for what comes next.

That perspective resonates strongly within the UAE, a country where ambition, innovation, cultural diversity, and opportunity continually intersect. Elnora’s own professional evolution demonstrates how seemingly different disciplines can come together when they are anchored by a consistent sense of purpose.

For her, success is therefore not measured solely by academic credentials, leadership positions, businesses, titles, or public recognition. Its deeper measure lies in impact.

Whether she is mentoring an emerging talent, supporting personal transformation, leading an organization, developing a creative venture, inspiring an audience, or simply encouraging someone who is struggling to believe in themselves, Elnora seeks to leave people with a stronger sense of confidence and possibility.

As she continues to build, create, lead, and inspire in 2026, Dr. Elnora Rose Celis represents a contemporary expression of women’s leadership, multifaceted, continually evolving, and grounded in purpose.

Her journey carries a message that extends far beyond her own achievements:

Challenges do not have to determine the direction of our future. They can become part of the experience from which new confidence, new opportunities, and an entirely new chapter emerge.

And perhaps that is the essence of Elnora’s story: a woman who continues to evolve, not because her journey has been easy, but because she has chosen to transform every experience into another reason to rise, create, and inspire.  

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Alessia Osti

​​​​​​Great cities are shaped not only by ambitious visions, but by the people capable of turning those visions into structures that endure. Behind the world’s most complex developments are leaders who understand that successful delivery demands judgement, collaboration, resilience and the ability to bring multiple disciplines together around a common objective.

Alessia Osti has built her career in precisely this environment.

With more than 25 years of construction experience spanning Italy, the United Kingdom, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, Alessia has developed a career at the frontline of construction delivery. Today, in a senior delivery leadership role with a Public Investment Fund in Saudi Arabia, she brings decades of international and regional experience to one of the world’s most ambitious development programmes.

What makes her progression particularly distinctive is the path she has taken. Alessia’s career has been built within the operational core of construction, initially with specialist contractors, progressing into senior leadership with major main contractors and ultimately to the client/developer side. It is a career spent close to the realities of execution: solving problems, managing interfaces, leading teams and taking responsibility for delivery. For a woman, that remains an unusual trajectory in a part of the construction industry that has historically been overwhelmingly male.

After beginning her career in Italy, Alessia spent a decade in London, progressing through project and contracts management roles with major European façade and building-envelope specialists.

During this period, she contributed to landmark UK developments including Heathrow Terminal 5, More London, Paternoster Square (London Stock Exchange HQ) and BBC MediaCity Manchester, working alongside leading international main contractors, developers and architects. This established the technical, contractual and commercial foundation that would become central to her later leadership roles.

Her career subsequently moved to the Gulf, where she has accumulated more than 15 years of experience across the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

In the UAE, Alessia progressed from senior project roles with specialist contractors to leading façade delivery for a major international main contractor. Her portfolio included the reinstatement of The Address Hotel Downtown Dubai, Dubai Mall Fashion Avenue, major re-cladding programmes across Dubai Marina and Downtown, the Royal Atlantis, Uptown Tower and two major landmarks as the Guggenheim and Zayed National Museum.

By 2024, Alessia’s career had evolved beyond specialist façade leadership.

She joined Red Sea Global as Construction Director for the Amaala Triple Bay development in Saudi Arabia. The position significantly broadened her executive responsibility across large-scale infrastructure, hospitality, residential and wellness developments, encompassing construction execution, procurement, value engineering, risk management and multidisciplinary stakeholder coordination.

Her career in Saudi Arabia has since progressed into Senior Director-level delivery roles within Public Investment Fund-backed development organisations, placing her at the heart of the Kingdom’s transformation under Vision 2030.

That progression has widened both the scale of Alessia’s responsibility and the perspective from which she leads construction.

Behind that experience is a strong academic foundation. Alessia holds a degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Bologna, where she also qualified as a licensed professional engineer, together with postgraduate study in logistics and construction systems production. Her continuing professional development has included project management, business management and specialist building-envelope and cladding studies, including training through the University of Bath.

Yet Alessia’s approach to leadership is grounded as much in people as in projects.

For her, successful delivery is never the achievement of one individual. Complex projects succeed because teams succeed. That means creating clarity, taking responsibility and maintaining strong relationships across clients, consultants, contractors and delivery teams.

That philosophy has remained consistent as the scale of her responsibilities has grown: put the team first, because project success is ultimately team success.

Alessia does not define her career by being a woman in a male-dominated industry. The stronger measure is the work itself: the technical credibility, resilience and leadership required to progress from specialist construction roles in London, through major project and regional leadership in the UAE, to Construction Director and Senior Director-level positions in Saudi Arabia.

Her journey is therefore about more than a sequence of landmark projects. It is a story of professional ascent, from technical specialist to project leader, from specialist contractor to main contractor, and ultimately from contractor to client.

Through technical expertise, resilience and collaborative leadership, Alessia Osti has built a distinctive career at the highest levels of international construction delivery, while helping demonstrate what is possible for the women who will follow. 

• LinkedIn - Alessia Osti

Conclusion

As this special edition comes to a close, one message stands above all others: women’s leadership is not defined by a single path, profession, or measure of success. It is shaped by the courage to pursue opportunities, the resilience to navigate change, the curiosity to keep learning, and the determination to create an impact that reaches beyond individual achievement.

At the heart of this edition remains Emirati Women’s Day, a proud national occasion dedicated to recognising Emirati women and their extraordinary contribution to the UAE’s development, identity, and future. Their achievements across business, government, science, education, entrepreneurship, culture, and society continue to demonstrate what becomes possible when ambition is supported by opportunity, empowerment, and a strong sense of purpose.

Inspired by that spirit, GulfArticles intentionally extended this special editorial celebration to include accomplished women of diverse nationalities whose professional journeys are connected to the UAE and the wider Gulf region. This broader representation does not seek to redefine the meaning of Emirati Women’s Day; rather, it acknowledges the unique environment that the UAE and Gulf have created, one where women from different cultures and professional backgrounds can contribute their expertise, build meaningful careers, establish businesses, lead organisations, and participate in the region’s continuing transformation.

The journeys of Malika Al Hashimi, Hari Carpenter, Sarah Varghese, Salomé Germain Trigano, Fozia Mirza, Neethu Paul, Nisha Sanghani, Charru Surtani, Dr. Elnora Rose Celis, and Alessia Osti demonstrate just how varied modern leadership can be. Across finance and fintech, branding, urban development, organisational transformation, maritime, business strategy, risk advisory, education and entrepreneurship, construction, travel, and MICE, each has built a distinctive path shaped by her own experiences, challenges, decisions, and ambitions.

What connects these ten stories is not nationality, nor is it a single definition of achievement. It is the ability to contribute to organisations, industries, communities, ideas, and the continued progress of a region that has become a meeting point for talent and ambition from around the world.

Their experiences also remind us that meaningful leadership rarely happens overnight. Behind professional recognition are years of learning, difficult transitions, calculated risks, unexpected setbacks, reinvention, collaboration, and persistence. The strongest careers are often those that continue evolving while remaining anchored in purpose.

As we celebrate Emirati Women’s Day in 2026, GulfArticles proudly honours the Emirati women whose achievements and aspirations remain the foundation and inspiration for this occasion. At the same time, through this special edition, we recognise a wider circle of women contributing to the dynamic professional landscape surrounding the UAE and Gulf.

May these ten journeys encourage more women to lead with confidence, embrace change with courage, create opportunities for others, and continue expanding what is possible. Because while every woman’s journey is uniquely her own, every barrier overcome and every opportunity created can make the path wider for those who follow. 

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