For this month’s special report on women in the workforce, Executive chose to profile a selection of seven successful, upper managerial level, Lebanese working women. Read more profiles as they’re published here, or pick up March’s issue at newsstands in Lebanon. For most of her academic life, from her years as a student to teaching as a…
Nesreen Ghaddar: All alone at the top
In a man’s world
This article is part of Executive’s special report on women in the workplace. Read more stories as they’re published here, or pick up March’s issue at newsstands in Lebanon. Najwa Layan — Police officer Journey and motivation Ever since she was a child, Najwa Layan has been attracted to military life. She says that three years…
Closing the gap
Imagine that you are thrown into a fist fight against a fully abled opponent, but one of your hands has been tied behind your back. Your ability to compete would be reduced by at least half making your chances of winning pretty slim. This analogy, with Lebanon as the fighter, illustrates the difficulty of having…
An obstacle course
This article is part of Executive’s special report on women in the workplace. Read more stories as they’re published here, or pick up March’s issue at newsstands in Lebanon. True story: Two candidates are applying for the post of development officer at a well established institution in Lebanon. Candidate A has two years working experience over candidate B,…
Women march on
Every March 8 the United Nations marks International Women’s Day to highlight the progress women have made towards equality with men and drawing attention to the challenges women continue to face across the world — the societal pressures, prejudices and violence subjugating them. Executive set out to mark the occasion by exploring the sadly inadequate…
Ladies first
Lebanon still has people, right? While this may sound like a dumb question, it was the only thing running through my mind after a 90 minute meeting with Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri on February 23. We were talking about Lebanon’s economic opportunities, but the speaker had a singular focus: natural resources. He talked about oil.…
Aiming for alpha
For many years Lebanon’s national tree, Cedrus libani, has been designated a beleaguered species whose numbers are lower than they should be. No such danger has ever faced our country’s premium financial species: the Lebanese bank. If there was any existential problem that our banks may have faced since national independence, it was overpopulation —…
Guess who’s coming to dinner?
In every corporate narrative, some dates are noted as remarkable, while others less so. For the founders of Shahiya, a digital portal for Lebanese culinary secrets and cooking instructions, January 28, 2015 is one such memorable date. It is the day when NetSila, the holding company that owns the five year young Shahiya recipe site,…
Automating the future
It is in Lebanon, of all places, that the tale of Technica unfolds. The company manufactures and customizes automated end of line solutions — those machines that prepare products after they’ve been individually assembled, or wrapped, for shipping. So, if you were to say, eat a Twix candy bar in Cairo, it would have been…
Israel’s cold shoulder
In December 2014, the United Nations General Assembly endorsed a request to Israel to compensate Lebanon for environmental damages to the latter’s coastal and marine territories following an oil spill. While the endorsement does not provide binding measures, it is the first time that the General Assembly has included a compensation figure — eight previous…
(De)sign of the times
“We gradually noticed a few abandoned commercial venues being renovated and then new tenants moving in. They were mainly little boutiques owned by young adults and at first we felt a sense of pride that people were recognizing our neighborhood as a place for creative business activities but now, with all the bars and the…
Our small, dependent economy
Lebanon is a small dependent economy, built on a quasi-complete consumerist system where we import more than 80 percent of our energy, food and most consumed products and services. The country also relies on financial inflows to finance its public debt and domestic consumption, with foreign inflows per year into the Lebanese economy reaching more…
Raise your spirits
Whether enjoying a glass of single malt whiskey after a long day, celebrating a special occasion with champagne, or simply catching up with friends over a couple of cocktails carefully prepared by a mixologist, it seems that alcoholic beverages constitute a part of life for many of us. While some other industries, such as the…
Running on empty
We were all completely shocked,” says Shams, a Syrian refugee and mother of two from north of Homs province, commenting on December’s announcement by the UN World Food Program (WFP) that it had suspended payments of food aid to Syrian refugees. “It really bothered us because everything we get, we get from the UN,” she…
Tsu-Naameh
Typically, not much thought is given to trash once it’s removed from the home — out of sight, out of mind. Not so in Lebanon. The problem of garbage disposal in the country has become a chronic and pressing issue. Every couple of years, the issue comes to a head: for one reason or another,…