About Us
The project is led by Linzi J Kemp, who earlier discovered an alarming gap between the abundance of women in college and absence of women in business in the GCC.
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Realizing that the higher the corporate ladder went, the lower the number of women present, Kemp, joined by colleagues Norita Ahmad and Linda McLoughlin, began a search for the few female leaders in the Gulf.
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A question was formed: Can we apply leadership theory to support professional women up the ranks? From there, the foundation was laid out for the first intensive and extensive study into the lives of professional women in the Middle East, with hopes to uncover the mystery behind the gender-gap, and to inspire more young women to persevere against the barriers in pursuit of their dreams.
About Our Website
Center for Women & Leadership: Theory to Practice is a research-backed initiative, created with two goals in mind: first, to craft role models out of professional women residing in the Arab Gulf countries; and second, to provide a stepping stone for academics and students interested in the topic of leadership in the Middle East.
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The website hopes to build a platform for women in the Gulf to share their stories of ambition and accomplishment through a series of face-to-face interviews. Their lives reveal recurrent themes across that invite exploration of the relationship between a woman’s culture and her professional occupation in the private and public Middle Eastern sectors.
Ultimately, WILTP plans to compile a public database of individual case studies chronicling the achievements of women across the Gulf– a first-of-its-kind living archive.