Genny Ghanimeh, a Dubai-based serial entrepreneur, has launched a business leadership boot camp programme to help women excel in business.
MIND CLOUD, a 12-week-long business leadership boot camp organised in partnership with the Dubai Business Women Council and in5, will begin with a 15-student class on October 15.
The content covers four distinctive aspects of business mastery by offering leadership and life coaching courses, mentorship sessions, access to investors and business networks.
“Based on the findings of our market research, we validated a unique gap in any other business programme, and thus added these four dimensions to our course,” says Ghanimeh. “The research helped us also to refine our offering in terms of courses needed, online access, the length and variety of the programme, gender and age, location, and similar.”
Ghanimeh explains that she often witnesses women in business facing certain personal challenges which prevent them from advancing to leadership positions at the same rate as men.
“Women in business are expected more than men to balance their lives between work and home,” she says. “They are expected to work and shine only on the sidelines. So women develop a personal belief to not allow themselves to shine and take the lead.”
However, Ghanimeh has not let gender bias stand in her way.
Before founding Pi Slice in 2012, she set up and managed Pro-ID in 2003, and Pi Investments, a boutique advisory for mergers and acquisitions deals in emerging countries, in 2007.
Pi Slice, her latest venture launched in partnership with MicroWorld.org, a subsidiary of the PlaNet Finance Group, is an online microfinance crowdfunding platform which allows individuals and corporations to lend to MENA-based microfinance institutions that further fund regional micro-entrepreneurs.
By giving a small online loan, a lender can help aspiring micro-entrepreneurs to overcome poverty, enter the formal economy, and proliferate available employment opportunities, Ghanimeh explains.
When asked to advise MENA-based social entrepreneurs, Ghanimeh says: “A social enterprise can and should have a sustainable if not profitable business model.
“They need to make sure they have a sustainable business model, and the mission of their venture will then speak for itself.
“Entrepreneurs in the MENA region all face challenges growing their models, and subsequently finding the right mentorship, funding, partners and markets to grow. The same applies to social entrepreneurs.
”All they need is to believe in the why of what they set themselves to do.”
She is a regular guest speaker on entrepreneurship and CSR topics at international and regional conferences, including delivering lectures at London Business School and Hult International Business School, among others.
Ghanimeh is the first winner of the Arabian Business StartUp Social Enterprise of the Year Award established in 2015.
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