Corporate Ambassadors Program

"Jordan Corporate Ambassadors Program - March 2008"

(Amman, Jordan) As part of its participation in the MENA BWN, the BPW-A kicked off its U.S. Corporate Ambassadors program with: Trends in Global Business & Advocacy: Perspectives from the United States and Jordan in celebration of International Women’s Day. The Business and Professional Women Association - Amman (BPWA), under the patronage of H.E. Amer Al Hadidi, the Minister of Trade and Industry, in partnership with the MENA Businesswomen's Network, Vital Voices Global Partnership and the U.S. State Department's Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI), hosted this two-day conference featuring prominent U.S. and Jordanian speakers. Vital Voices brought three U.S. Corporate Ambassadors to Amman, including: Beth Brooke, Global Vice Chair for Strategy and Regulatory Affairs at Ernst & Young; Catherine Yandel, Partner of NewPlan LLC; Marilyn Harris, Vice President of Marathon Oil, to participate in panel discussions and lead workshops on critical business and advocacy topics of interest in the region.

The first Corporate Ambassador event got off to a great start. Over 100 people turned out for the opening remarks and the panel session on global trends. Meisa Batayneh, Natalie Brown (the U.S. Economic Counselor), Amer Hadidi (the Minister of Trade and Industry), and Beth Brooke’s opening remarks focused on International Women’s Day and the need for women’s economic empowerment in Jordan, the Middle East and throughout the world.

The panel session, which was moderated by a former Jordanian actress and now founder of Jordan’s National Center for Culture & Performing Arts, Lina Attel, was both informative and spontaneous. The highlight was when Ms. Subhieh Maani, one of the founders of the BPWA and from an era when businesswomen were scarce in Jordan, gave a very personal account of the history of the BPWA and the struggle businesswomen in Jordan, like herself, have gone through to achieve the standing that they have today.

She brought the crowd to tears, particularly when she reminisced about her late husband, also her business partner, who fortunately had a liberal mindset at the time and supported her entrepreneurship. She said “We all know the saying, behind every great man, there is a great woman; but it is also true that behind every great woman, there is a great man.” Later, the Corporate Ambassadors addressed very complex, yet pertinent issues in Jordan: Beth Brooke tackled the changing financial landscape, answering the audience’s questions about the current credit crisis and its effects on Jordan and the Middle East; Catherine Yandel focused on e-business trends and how tools like on-line social networking can be used to enhance one’s business, which stirred everyone’s interest; and Marilyn Harris touched on every Jordanian’s concern – global energy trends and what Jordan can do to decrease its dependency on its neighbors’ energy resources.

Lunch was followed by targeted workshops, wherein the U.S. Corporate Ambassadors joined Jordanian counterparts to share knowledge on strategic planning, corporate growth, corporate governance, and raising capital. Catherine Yandel led the workshop on Strategic Planning, along with a Jordanian Strategic Planning expert, Nisreen Barakat, BPWA Board Member, who added a Jordanian point of view to the workshop. Bishr Baker, Partner, Assurance and Advisory Business Services of Ernst & Young, and Beth Brooke delivered a succinct and informative presentation on Corporate Governance, alleviating participants’ dread of a normally esoteric topic. Feedback from attendees at both sessions was very positive and the consensus was that everyone enjoyed hearing from top-notch people in these fields. That evening, the event got 10 minutes of coverage by Jordan TV news, and the next morning, an article covering the event was on the front page of the Jordan Times (http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=6308).

Day Two began with a third workshop led by Catherine Yandel, Mrs. Muna Hakooz, an HR advisor to the Jordanian government, and Mrs. Haifa Najjar, Director of the Ahliyyah School for Girls, wherein each presenter gave tips to leverage one’s human resources for corporate growth. A topic that struck at the core of one of Jordan’s main business obstacles, the presenters were bombarded with questions by attendees concerned with retaining quality staff in times of inflated salary increases caused by regional competition, particularly from Dubai. While none of the presenters could offer the perfect solution to Jordan’s salary crisis, Catherine Yandel suggested anticipating and incorporating salary increases into one’s long-term strategic plan so the company would be prepared, and Haifa Najjar advocated for creating a corporate culture that cultivated a sense of ownership and dedication among staff.

In the fourth workshop, Beth Brooke and Samar Obaid, Senior Manager of Transaction Advisory Services at Ernst & Young Amman, offered options for raising capital in Jordan. Samar listed various sources of funding, from venture capital to bank loans, and detailed the processes for taking a company public. So impressed by her presentation, the BPWA invited her back to present at a subsequent event on results-oriented budgeting.

The agenda on March 10th also focused on advocacy skills development, with panel discussions and targeted advocacy skills development workshops. The advocacy sessions began with an hour and a half panel discussion moderated by H.E. Asma Khader, General Secretary of the Jordanian National Commission for Women’s Affairs. As she detailed challenges to advocacy in Jordan, she asked the Corporate Ambassadors to offer examples of how the U.S. has dealt with similar obstacles or suggestions on how to overcome them in Jordan. In response to the challenge of low capacity of associations working on advocacy issues, Catherine Yandel proposed the idea of creating trade associations for particular industries in order to lobby the government for more favorable laws. Beth Brooke suggested creating advocacy coalitions, bringing together both businesses and non-profits, to address current communication and coordination problems in Jordan. Following this discussion, Marilyn Harris presented a general advocacy training session which detailed best practice strategies for implementing business lobbying strategies and corporate social responsibility activities. Her Jordanian advocacy counterpart, Ms. Hala Ayoubi, BPWA Federation Board Member, highlighted Jordanian case studies to this effect. The attendees were then able to put these practices to work in the last workshop where, divided into five groups, they had to devise an effective advocacy strategy for increasing women’s participation in the workforce in Jordan. Each group had to develop a strategy from a different perspective: Public Relations & Media, Information and Research, Political Outreach, Grassroots & Community Relations, and Communications and Issue Development. Facilitated by Ms. Suzanne Afaneh, Director of Corporate Communications and CSR for Zain, the groups presented their strategies, which in the end were combined to form one cohesive and effective advocacy strategy for the issue. This strategy would form the basis for the BPWA’s advocacy campaign on increasing women’s economic participation in Jordan.

The two-day event not only provided business and advocacy capacity building, but also offered a unique opportunity for both Jordanian businessmen and businesswomen and U.S. executives to network and exchange ideas that will help solidify the critical link between businesswomen in the MENA region and the U.S. Meisa Batayneh concluded the two-day event by thanking the Corporate Ambassadors for their valuable contribution to both business men and women in Jordan. Beth Brooke in turn thanked the BPWA for organizing such an incredible two-day experience for them, stating that she felt she “got a lot more than she gave.” Both parties vowed to maintain the relationships they had developed over the past two days for many years to come.

A successful beginning to a program that, throughout 2008, will expand to take delegations of senior women executives as Corporate Ambassadors from the U.S. to each country participating in the MENA Businesswomen’s Network for a dynamic two-day program tailored for the Network Hub and its members. The programs, like this one, will include workshops, roundtable discussions, one-on-one meetings as well as specialized advocacy training on an issue critical to the Hub.

Vital Voices’ Corporate Ambassadors Program, in cooperation with the Middle East Partnership Initiative at the U.S. Department of State, was developed specifically for the Middle East North Africa Businesswomen’s Network (MENA BWN). This is a regional network which aims to increase the number of women in business, maximize their success, advance the role of women in society and promote a regional culture of women’s entrepreneurship. The MENA Businesswomen’s Network is focused on four areas: business networking communications by means of an internet portal (www.menabwn.org), delivering cutting edge on-line Business Education Certificate Program to its members, supporting network hubs through technical and grant assistance, and training and mentoring via the Corporate Ambassadors Program. The network currently consists of women business associations in Bahrain, Dubai, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Qatar, and Tunisia, with two more countries to be added in 2009. Currently, the network comprises 1500 business women who own a wide range of businesses including financial services, public relation firms, pharmaceutical companies as well as manufacturing.

Trends in Global Business & Advocacy: Perspectives from the United States and Jordan
Event Summary
Event Agenda
10 Things a CEO Needs to Know about Human Resources
Advocacy Presentation
Raising Capital in Jordan Slides
Financial Responsibility and Accountability Presentation
Using Strategic Planning to Grow Your Business (2003)
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