Biography of speakers of the UfM International Women Day 2021 Webinar: Women in Leadership, towards an equal region in a COVID-19 world. 5 March 2021

Dr. Marisa Farrugia is the Deputy Secretary General of the Union for the Mediterranean in charge of Social and Civil Affairs since September 2019. Marisa Farrugia is a Maltese diplomat who has held over the years senior positions both at the Ministry for Foreign and European Affairs and abroad. Prior to her secondment as Special Envoy and Ambassador to the Union for the Mediterranean at the Union’s Secretariat in August 2017, she was Deputy Director responsible for External Relations, Mediterranean Affairs, and the MENA Region. Marisa Farrugia holds a PhD in Arabic and Near Eastern Studies from the University of Leeds and a Master’s Degree from the University of Toronto, Canada, majoring in international relations and the socio-political aspects of the Arab world.

Olga Martin Gonzalez holds a Master’s degree in Gender and Development and a B.A in Political Science. Currently, she is the Gender Equality Coordinator in the European Commission, Directorate-General European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations (DG NEAR). She has more than 15 years of experience working on gender and development and humanitarian issues in several countries, such as Senegal, Namibia, India, Mauritania and South Africa.

Jihen Boutiba General Secretary of BUSINESSMED since 2014. Besides leading the International Relations of the Organisations for almost 15 years, she worked at the U.S Department of States in Tunisia within the Political and Economic section for foreign grants assistance on the Economic Support funds. She has an extensive experience in managing large programs at international levels, responsible for partnership and networking relations with diplomatic Institutions in the Euromed/MENA Regions. Mrs Boutiba holds several Expert Positions: she is currently the Executive Director of the EU-project “Enhancing Business Support Organizations-EBSOMED” in the EuroMed region, Director of the ENI-CBC Investmed project, Consultant in Euro-Mediterranean diplomatic trainings with ENA “Ecole Nationale d’Administration & Deputy Director of the South Mediterranean Social Dialogue Project “SOLiD II” and liason manager with ILO project component, member of the MENA-OECD Business Advisory Board, board member of HOMERe project, Policy for development and Instituto Eurispes. She is member of the Italian B20 coalition under the chairmanship of Confindustria on Trade and Investment and Digitalisation issues. She has two children and is holder of a family business in the mining sector.

Dr. Carlos Conde is Head of the Middle East and Africa Division in the Global Relations Secretariat of the OECD. On this capacity, he leads the implementation of MENA-OECD Initiative on Governance and Competitiveness for Development. Since 2005, the Initiative promotes policy dialogue on governance, investment and private sector development between MENA and OECD countries. During this period, the MENA Initiative has introduced the process of OECD peer review in the MENA region, supported processes of reform at the national level and conducted capacity building activities. He holds a PhD in Political Science and Public Administration from the Complutense University, Madrid, Spain.

María Helena de Felipe Lethonen is the co-founder of FES BUSINESS INTERNATIONAL CONSULTING SL, International Business Consultancy, providing corporate legal services for SMEs companies and consultancy specialized in project management in Business Gender Equality and Opportunities addressed to SMEs, organizations and public institutions at regional, national and Euro Mediterranean level. She is Co-Chair of Women Commission in ASCAME (Federation of Mediterranean Chambers of Commerce) and Member of the Advisory Board of ASCAME and EMEA (Euro Mediterranean Economists Association).She is also an active member of the EUROPEAN ECONOMIC SOCIAL COMMITTEE, member of the SOC, REX and the EUROMED follow up Committee (E.E.S.C), and the vice-president of a number of institutions such as SMEunited, CEPYME or FOMENT DEL TREBALL. She has been the president of FEPIME-CATALUNYA since 2014, and a member of the board of C.E.O.E..

Amel Saidane is an entrepreneur, ecosystem builder and digital transformation expert. She is president of TunisianStartups, the association giving a voice to Tunisian startups and co-founder of BetaCube a venture builder in Fintech and mobility solutions. She is also the co-founder of Digital2Value an SME digital transformation platform. She acts as management consultant specialising in digital transformation and business strategy. She is an innovation and digital transformation activist acting as a board member for the Digital Center of Excellence of the UN Economic Commission for Africa and as Tunisia steering committee member for Digital Arabia Network, a platform supporting the digital transformation in the Arab world. She is a member of the StartupAct “College of Startups”. She also a member of the BMW Responsible Leaders Network, and a fellow of the BMW Ready-Go program. She has acted in different sales and client relationship management roles. Working in Tunisia for some of the largest multinationals (Microsoft, Siemens, Nokia Siemens), Amel has an extensive knowledge of the Tunisian market and sales and marketing management practices. Amel is an engineer in electro-technics, qualified from the Leibniz University of Hannover, Germany, and has a M.Sc. in Business in Digital Economy from the University of Maryland.

Yasmine Seghirate is the Policy and Communications Manager and Gender Policy and Women Empowerment focal point at CIHEAM’s Headquarters. Graduated of Sciences Politiques in Aix-en-Provence, with a specialty in political sociology of the Arab and Muslim world, Yasmine was responsible for the ORSE (French Observatory of Corporate Social Responsibility) projects on sustainable development and CSR in the Maghreb. She was previously project officer in the office of the UN Under-Secretary-General for Innovative Financing for Development (UNITAID) and a consultant for the French Development Agency (AFD). Her associative involvement led her to be a founding member of ATLAS (Algerian Talents and Leaders Association) and head of the CSR and Territories Committee of the CACIF (Algerian Chamber of Commerce and Industry in France).

Ndaya Beltchika is IFAD’s Lead Technical Specialist – Gender, Targeting and Social Inclusion. Her team is within the Environment, Climate, Gender and Social Inclusion Division (ECG) and provides strategic and operational advice to IFAD’s funded projects across all regions. She joined IFAD in that capacity on 16 April 2018. Prior to that, Ms Beltchika was Country Director in the West and Central Africa Division where she led the development of country strategies and provided oversight and coordinated programmes of loans and grants of Benin, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Prior to joining IFAD in 2010, Ms Beltchika held various positions in the public and private sector. Ms Beltchika holds a “Bachelor’s +1” in Agronomy from La Faculté des Sciences Agronomique de l’Etat à Gembloux, Belgium, a Master’s degree in Agricultural Economics from the University of California at Davis, California, USA and a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Babson College F. W. Olin Graduate School of Business in Massachusetts, USA.

Myriam Fournier Kacimi, CEO, Sungy Sas, is and executive woman in investment banking. She was born in Algiers and grew up in France. She is concerned with pollution issues and wanted to fully engage herself to reduce CO2 emissions. She was convinced by solar energy while working in Japan and in Germany as she had the chance to see how far those countries were in developing solar energy.  She then decided to found SunGy to make solar energy a reality in Africa. SunGy develops projects for solar farms and global solutions for farmers and corporates. Its added value is both in financial and energy engineering. She is a Financial engineer with an Executive Master in Science of Finance from Baruch Zicklin School of NYC and American University of Paris.

She is an international speaker, she is fully engaged to empower woman for a much better world. She received many international awards and distinctions for those two commitments and successful achievements. She is Ambassador for the digital cluster in Africa, Former Global head of operational risk within investment banks. She received the Gold award for the revelations in Women Initiative in Africa 2020 and was TOP 20 among 22 000 entrepreneurs as Africa Business heroes 2020 as well as being awarded in the 2020 Africa-France summit in the 1000 African entrepreneurs challenge. She is Board member  and Executive committee member of  the 2020 Young Entrepreneurs Alliance for G20 within the French delegation. She won entrepreneurs of year by Ipag PARIS twice, in 2015 and 2020 and is a national expert to development and international cooperation agencies for solar energy, strategy, bankability aspects.

Dr. Margarita Rico (PhD, 2006 in Economic and Business Sciences from the University of Valladolid) is full professor of Agricultural Economics at Higher Technical School of Agrarian Engineering, Palencia (University of Valladolid, Spain). Her R&D work has been focused on socio-economic analysis in rural areas and rural development strategies. Specifically she has focused on issues such as rural women work and their contribution to rural development, evaluation of policies for rural development, rural depopulation, rural tourism and the food industry. Professor Rico is currently working on issues related to green agriculture and sustainable forest management from an economic, social and gender perspective. The results of all these lines of research have been published in several books chapters and in specialized journals papers, also participated in numerous national and international conferences.

Anna Rita Ronzoni is Technical Officer for Gender-Based Violence in the WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean. As a gender expert, she has been working on women’s health, protection and empowerment for the last 18 years, particularly in the Middle East.

Dr. Agnès Buzyn is the WHO Director General’s Envoy for Multilateral Affairs. She leads WHO’s engagements with multilateral partners, including overseeing relations with the Union for the Mediterranean. Prior to joining WHO, Dr Buzyn served as the French Minister of Solidarity and Health from 2017 to 2020.

Dr Roopa Dhatt is a passionate advocate for gender equality in global health and a leading voice in the movement to correct the gender imbalance in global health leadership. She is also a practicing Internal Medicine physician at Georgetown University MedStar Hospital in Washington, D.C. Dr Dhatt is particularly committed to addressing issues of power, privilege, and intersectionality that keep many women from global health leadership roles and to opening up spaces for the voices of these women to be heard. Determined to build a movement to transform women’s leadership opportunities in health, Dr Dhatt co-founded Women in Global Health in 2015. She holds numerous advisory, board, and ambassador roles. She advises the WHO on matters of the health workforce, gender equity, and universal health coverage. She has published in the Lancet, BMJ, Devex, Forbes, and been interviewed in National Geographic, Nature, NPR, EuroNews, and numerous other channels. Dr Dhatt was recognized in the Gender Equality Top 100 , the most influential people in global policy 2019.

Maryam Bigdeli is a pharmacist and holds a PhD in public health from the Université libre de Bruxelles. She started her career with Doctors without borders in Guinea in 1993. Prior to her appointment as WHO Representative in Morocco, Ms Bigdeli worked at WHO headquarters in Geneva in the Department of Health Systems Governance and Financing. Before that, she worked for WHO in Laos and Cambodia. She started her career with Médecins Sans Frontières and has also experience in health economics and pharmaco-economics with the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer and in the Department of Health Economics at the School of Public Health of the Free University of Brussels. She has particular interest in equity in access to health services for vulnerable and disadvantaged population.

Dr. Neila Amara holds a Ph.D. in economics from Paris Dauphine University (France). She first embraced an academic career before devoting herself full-time to her work as a Program Development Specialist with a specific focus on women and youth economic empowerment and private sector development. She currently works as an International Program Management Specialist at the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), coordinating inter alia the implementation of phase II of the project “Promoting women’s empowerment for Inclusive and Sustainable Industrial Development in the Middle-East and North-Africa region” labelled by the Union for the Mediterranean and implemented by UNIDO jointly with FAO and UN Women.

Fatima Zahra is CEED Mena director. Prior to joining CEED as the Director of CEED Morocco, Fatima Zahra was a serial entrepreneur. She founded companies offering services in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. Fatima Zahra has always been passionate about entrepreneurship and working with other entrepreneurs as seen by her work with many entrepreneurship ecosystem actors the Mena region.