ARB Woman is the flagship editorial platform elevating Arab women in business, policy, and entrepreneurship — publishing original reporting, founder interviews, and the region's most-watched annual ranking, read by ministers, fund managers, and founders across 31 countries.
From the Editor · 14 March 2025
Lina Al-Mansoori
Founder & Editor-in-Chief, ARB Woman
When we launched ARB Woman in 2017, the question we kept hearing from senior women across the Gulf, the Levant, and North Africa was a quiet one: who is actually covering us? Not as a footnote in a corporate sustainability report, not as a panelist listed after eight men — but as a subject of serious, named, original reporting.
Eight years on, that is still the work. This year we are publishing investigations into sovereign wealth funds deploying gender-lens mandates across the GCC, a six-part series on female founders closing rounds in Cairo, Amman, and Casablanca, and our reporting on women in STEM in KSA, where 47 new research chairs have opened in the last twelve months alone. Our policy desk is tracking regulatory reform from Riyadh to Abu Dhabi.
The 7th edition of the 100 Most Powerful Arab Businesswomen — the ranking you will meet below — is the most consequential piece of editorial IP we publish each year. It is independent, audited, and unpaywalled in its preview. The full list is reserved for our weekly briefing readers, who fund the work.
If you are building, leading, or scaling across this region, you belong on this list and inside this network. Welcome.
The Ranking · 2025
Now in its seventh year, our independent ranking is the region's most-read annual audit of female economic power. Four names from this year's list, below — the full 100 is reserved for our weekly briefing.
No. 01
Minister of State for International Cooperation, UAE · Chair, Expo City Dubai Authority
"Capital is a conviction. We deploy it where the conviction is documented, audited, and built to outlive a single term."
Read the No. 01 profile →No. 07
Chair, Tadawul-listed NCB Capital · Riyadh
Profile →No. 12
CEO, Olayan Financing Company · Riyadh
Profile →No. 19
Chair, Saudi-British Business Council · Beirut / London
Profile →The full 100-name ranking, with audited methodology and regional breakdowns across 18 MENA markets, publishes in our weekly briefing.
See the full 100This week's briefing · Issue No. 184
Founder Interview
Nour El-Kassaby built Émin from a two-person operation into a 64-person clinical team across three countries. She walks us through the deck, the term sheet, and the meeting that almost didn't happen.
Read the interview →
Gender-Lens Investing
ARB Woman has partnered with 14 SWFs and family offices to host closed-door capital roundtables. We map which allocators have moved from rhetoric to policy — and which have not.
Read the analysis →
Policy & Regulation
A plain-language readout of the eight most consequential workforce reforms moving through Gulf legislatures this quarter — and the four that have already passed.
Read the policy brief →By the numbers · ARB Woman 2025
1.2M
Monthly readers across 31 countries
47% GCC · 28% Levant & North Africa · 25% global diaspora
4,200+
Senior women executives in our readership
Across 18 MENA markets
612
Women placed into board & VP roles since 2019
Through the ARB Woman mentorship network
312%
Newsletter readership growth, 2021–2024
Weekly briefing, audited annually
Original reporting cited by the Financial Times, Bloomberg, and Reuters on Gulf women's workforce participation. Awarded “Best Regional Media Platform” at the Arab Women in Business Awards 2023 and “Media Brand of the Year” at the Dubai Content Awards 2024.
