Maha Al Ghunaim founded Global Investment House — one of the region’s biggest investment firms — in 1998 along with four friends. When she took the firm public on the London Stock Exchange in 2008, it became the first Kuwaiti company to the list on the exchange. The credit crunch forced the company to delist, but in many ways, GIH’s refinancing became a model for other companies to follow. “I started from the bottom and learned how things are done and gradually moved my way up the ladder,” Al Ghunaim told CBC News last year.