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Hosted by ROSHN Group  
Around the world, significant strides have been made to increase the number of women in corporate leadership positions. In the U.S., women make up 29% of C-Suite level roles and hold approximately 30% of board seats. And here in Saudi Arabia, nearly 10% of board positions are held by women, a new reality made possible by the Kingdom’s ambitious Vision 2030 strategy and other significant government-led reforms. Even with such progress, untapped opportunities remain in industries where women have traditionally been underrepresented – from construction and engineering to technology and energy. In this special lunch program, we’ll explore the strategies needed to advance women into C-suite positions, create more inclusive workplaces, foster untapped talent, and create a path to parity – not just progress – for women at all levels of business.
Panelists:
Dr. Maryam Ali Ficociello, Group Chief Governance Officer, Red Sea Global
Giovanna Carnevali,	 Executive Director, Master Planning, ROSHN Group
Dr. Saeeda Jaffar, Senior Vice President and Group Country Manager – GCC, Visa
Jena Ladhani, Chief Executive Officer, Global Workplace Solutions, KSA, CBRE
Renée McGowan, Chief Executive Officer, India, Middle East, and Africa, Marsh McLennan
Moderator: Michal Lev-Ram, Contributing Editor, Fortune

WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP LUNCH PROGRAM: ADVANCING WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE

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Fintech has revolutionized banking, payments, and investment, democratizing financial services for many in the process. But this increase in access to digital-first solutions comes with privacy and operational risks, prompting complex questions about regulation and compliance. From the proliferation of super apps to AI-powered personalized services and enhanced fraud detection, we’ll discuss where fintech goes next. 

The Next Decade in Fintech

Our next conversation is about the future of financial technology or fintech and how it is transforming banking payments, and investment. Importantly, it's also democratizing access to financial services for people around the world. Here to discuss where FinTech goes next, please welcome Emily Chiu, Chief Executive officer for Novo, which is an online banking platform for small businesses. OK, so I should note that, uh, in addition to being the new CEO of Novo, Emily spent how many years at Block? Over 7 years, over 7 years at Block, uh, parent company of Square and Cash App, um, so lots of, uh, lots of knowledge on, uh, on Fintech and. And one of the pioneers, um, so I want to start out by asking you, you know, we've seen this kind of fintech revolution on the consumer side. What's the status when it comes to businesses and especially small businesses, which is Novo's focus? Yeah, it's such a pleasure to be here with you, Mahal. Um, you know, small businesses are still so underserved today in the US alone there's 33 million small businesses. It contributes to half of the country's employment, close to half of the country's GDP. And these stats are really reflected globally, um, despite it being such a huge driver, we really haven't seen the same type of innovation in the B2C fintech space, um, in the B2B world, and uh I live this every day at home. My husband is a small business entrepreneur, and when you speak to small businesses across the world, you constantly hear how underserved, how underlooked they are, and a big reason for this is because they're just simply not the primary focus for large banks. Um, and so I think the same kind of innovation that we brought over the years at Square at Cash App in making people who have been previously unseen and unserved first class citizens, there's a huge opportunity to do that. Novo, um, bringing the best of not just banking but all of the different services that small businesses need to grow and thrive under one roof and making their lives easy so they can focus on building their businesses and thriving. So I know you've you've you've said and you've thought a lot about um this kind of concept of there being a lot of room for innovation, a lot of open space, um, in areas that have historically not really provided access for everyone um share real quick the story of your mom. You know, it's, it's pretty amazing that we're here at the Fortune International Women Most Powerful conference, um, because I look back at the arc of my own history and my grandmother was the last generation of women who had her feet bound, you know, it was, uh, it was elite for women to, uh, actually not be able to walk and be carried, right? That's how much agency women had, um, and I look one more generation forward to my mom. And she arrived in the United States as an immigrant in the 70s and I don't know if a lot of people remember, but up until 1974, a woman couldn't open a bank account in the United States nor access any kind of credit without a male guarantor signing for her and vouching for her. Um, so you have my feisty mother arriving, um, and she's a creative, she's a jewelry maker, she used to travel all over the world, she's a calligrapher and artist, and she had big dreams of being able to provide for herself by creating a business around this, um, and she couldn't get a bank account and she couldn't get a line of credit, um, and so she actually met my father because she put out a call to her friends saying I need to meet a man who could sponsor me for my business. And, and when she first met him, she said, well, you know, I, I need all these things. I need credit, I need access to a bank account, um, and when we do that, my money is still my money, but your money is my money too so. And they and they did fall in love. They did fall in love, yes, not just for access to credit, um, but it just goes to show that over the last 50 years, it's only been 50 years in the US, um, so much has changed and I talked to my mom today and just the fact that I'm on stage here with you as the CEO of a of a banking platform granting access to credit loans. Helping businesses thrive, many of them female owned businesses, is just incredible, you know, just looking at the arc of how far we've come. Well, so give just the kind of like one or two liner on what Novo actually does. Sure, we're one of the most simple banking platforms for small businesses. We have a globally distributed workforce from the US to Colombia to India. And we serve about a quarter of a million small businesses a day, uh, businesses of all types. Um, we make it incredibly easy for you to get a bank account with no fees, um, no minimums, so you could start with literally $100 if that's all you had. Um, we make it very easy for you to get access to credit, debit card, credit card spend, and in addition to that, we tie it to all the needs that you have from bookkeeping um to sending invoices to auto tagging your expenses, uh, just to make your life easy because these are really not why people went into business, uh, to do bookkeeping and expenses and taxes so we. Care of that for people and you touched on this earlier um just kind of the the the presence the over indexing of women on the small business side by the way I think we talk about startups a lot we're talking small businesses that are not, you know, venture backed necessarily right which is really the bread and butter of, of, uh, you know, more so of the more representative of the, the real small business economy, um. It it talk about in what ways you see um what Novo's doing and just more um products out there more tech platforms that cater to small businesses having an impact on not just entrepreneurs but female entrepreneurs and I know you've got some interesting. Stats on on that end, yeah, I mean it's remarkable because fortune is always highlighting women and promoting women in the fortune and the stats are 11% of Fortune companies are currently 500%, um, and so it was an interesting observation in our conversation, uh, that in the US about 43% of small businesses are led by women. Um, it's much higher than 11%, much higher, yeah, and I looked globally and the statistics are very similar here in the kingdom, um, the number is about 45%, so maybe even a little higher than in the US, um, which is just so exciting to me just knowing that women are out there creating, building, um, being really part of the fabric of growth for our economies just given how much of GDP small businesses drive, um, to bring it back to tangible examples, um, during COVID we actually had one female owner that we were. Reporting on the banking side, um, she started a business called Deluna and uh it actually helps women with period pain and so they make very natural products um that are meant to uh support women when they have cramps or when they feel like they can't get up and go to work um and really just their mission is to make it such that no woman is held back by her period from going on and doing what she needs to do in the world. This business almost went bankrupt during COVID because her supply chain was so backed up. I mean they had months of. Inventory queued up they needed access to credit and during that time we were actually able to run based on our proprietary data and algorithms that we built a way to surface who are all the people that we could help and proactively help and so based on that we surfaced her business. We were able to get her $30,000 in a loan that landed literally days after we simplified the application for her. Um, we found another 2000 to $30,000 worth of credit she didn't know about, you know. Just closing the gap between knowledge and access um and her business is thriving today. It was featured in Vogue. It was featured in the New York Magazine and so it's just amazing the impact of what you can do just getting people through the hardships of small businesses, you know, there are many make or break moments and I really think the next generation of fintechs and bankings are the ones that are going to be proactive about thinking through how can we help. Yeah, now that's the huge, huge shift there, um, so let's take a step back, talk about. Kind of fintech trends more broadly beyond Novo um one of the things that we've seen take off in in recent years are these kind of financial fintech super apps, payment super apps I should say, um, that's not, I mean, I know in the United States that's not really been the trend. What are you seeing on a more global level? Are super apps the future is that, I mean, and if Novo has an angle there too, please share. Yeah, I think that the trend towards consolidation and giving consumers more convenience, access and personalization isn't going away. I think the term super app has taken very different forms around the world and so if you look to Asia, um, the, uh, WeChat apps of the world, the Alipay apps of the world, the Grab pay apps of the world, they've all evolved in very interesting ways and become really monolithic apps that enable you to do everything pay your bills, buy groceries, um conduct financial transactions. It really is an all in one app. Um, Grabpay actually had an interesting story because their apps started. By serving small uh small business drivers, almost like Uber drivers, um, who didn't have access to the banking system and needed a way to be paid and so financial services became a very logical outgrowth, um, to the uh uh ride hailing app, um, and became a super app in the US I would say it's been more focused on consumer apps and so businesses like Cash App where I was, um, or Revolut, um, PayPal, these are the businesses that have really thought through building it not so much. In the Asian style as a monolithic everything app, but much more of an ecosystem of fintech applications. And so just as an example for me when I was innovating for Cash App, we served largely underbanked people who had never owned access to in some cases a bank account, but in many cases owned equity owned stocks, you know, had any means of building wealth, and so we really thought of the app as how can we continue to innovate and build to bring more utility, more engagement to our customers. Customers, um, and give them access to what they actually wouldn't get access to at a large bank, um, and so that's that's more of the shape that it's taken in the consumer side in the US um I haven't really seen so much in the business side, SMB side, but I think that's changing um you now see apps that are focused on spend management start to think about bank accounts, um, you now start seeing bank accounts starting to think about should we then help with taxes, should we then help with um all of the integrated ways to be. The control panel for your business um so I think that's gonna, I think that's gonna change um and I'm pretty excited about being part of leading that opportunity so we've had a few conversations about AI um on stage and they'll be more today, um, and I'm, I'm curious to hear like, you know, with the, the popularity of FinTech, uh, obviously there's concerns for risks as well, security fraud all of that which we have in traditional finance too, of course, um. Coupled with AI Gen AI like what is that future? What do the future risks look like? I mean what are you seeing now and, and what are you doing about it to mitigate future risk? Yeah, so the part that I'm really excited about is the level of personalization it can bring. Um, I do think that AI will level the playing field for small businesses, uh, even at my company, um, I don't know if our chief people officers in in the audience that she's been over the last year building apps in Python. Um, building apps to streamline the HR function without the need for an engineer, right? So it's just incredible that one person with a great idea, um, can now just go out and prototype, build, um, you really can see one person businesses becoming, you know, what used to require entire teams and funding so that's very exciting. I'm also really excited about our ability to. Personalize things for people just given the data that they have small businesses today, they often dread logging into their bank account, you know, they might have unpaid bills. There's nothing that helps with scenario planning, you know, if you're a small business and you don't know when you're going to get paid, the variances to that could really impact your cash flows. It could really impact how quickly you can pay your own supply. Hires and employees and currently my husband who runs a small business keeps a 20 page spreadsheet to do that. That sounds fun, not fun. There's just really nothing for him. So there's a lot that AI can bring, but you know we were talking about the risks and I think from a financial services perspective everyone's talking about AI in terms of how I can drive productivity and personalization. Um, and you know, biases obviously in terms of how you underwrite and how that mimics um the existing biases in our current world and data set, um, but one risk that I don't really hear people talk much about that I think is significant is the risk of it actually breaking the trust and identity systems upon which our entire economy relies, right? Um, when you log into a bank, um, you need to make sure that you're not a fraudster, that you're not logging in to facilitate terrorist financing. There are global standards around this and more and more AI is able to very realistically mimic deep fakes such that you real quick. Yeah, that's the story. Yeah, I was in Hong Kong when the news broke and there was a finance executive who was told by his CFO to wire 200 million Hong Kong dollars out. Um, he didn't know if this was legitimate, and he said, let me get on a Zoom call with you. So he got on a Zoom call with the CFO and two members of the finance team, and then convinced that this was real, sent the money. That was all a deep fake. Um, so we're gonna run into a world where our, our ability to really trust and validate what's real, um, the system of trust upon which commerce relies upon which fintech relies, it's gonna be a real challenge and that presents both risks but also opportunities. So if Emily, uh, asks you for money like I don't know. We need to secure a code or something or something, some kind of wink. I, I mean just real quick, like are there obvious solutions to that that you're already looking you know there's some wild solutions where some people are trying to build a trust layer for the internet, um, others are looking into biometrics like retina scans. um, there's a lot of different solutions. There are folks on the um on the compliance side that are pioneering different ways but it's it's not a solved situation yet and so it's something I would be on the lookout for if you're in this situ if even if you're outside of FinTech. Well, we'll leave you with that food for thought. It's a crazy story, Emily, thank you so much appreciate it.

Global technology policy is increasingly influenced by major tech firms based in a handful of wealthy nations. The Digital Cooperation Organization, which is headquartered in Saudi Arabia, is the world’s first stand-alone organization focused on the global digital economy. Its goal? To ensure technology drives prosperity and opportunity for all. We'll discuss the policy, legislation, and education solutions required to make this a reality, so that no country, business, or sector of society is left behind. 

Digital Transformation Across Borders: What's At Stake?

Hello again everyone and Secretary General, thank you so much for being here with us. It's a real honor. I want to start with the basics for anyone in the room who isn't familiar with the digital cooperation Organization, which we can also call the DCO for brevity. It was founded in 2020 by 5 countries, I believe. Tell me how that founding came about and why the organization was needed. Well, certainly, but first, thank you for having me. Um, it's great to have, uh, the, uh, uh, the, uh, fortune most, uh, powerful woman chapter here in Saudi. Uh, it is the place to be, um, uh, so we're very happy to have you here and thank you for having us. And going back to, uh, DCO, uh, as we see digital economy now it's growing very rapidly, you know, last year alone it was 16% of the overall GDP. Expected in 2030, 70% of the GDP is going to be driven by digital solutions. Therefore, that comes with abundance of opportunities, but to harness these opportunities, countries need to transform. And for them to transform they really need to have a lot of uh uh um investment in either capital and investments either uh policy regulations, human capital development infrastructure as well, uh, very difficult for one country to do it alone. And this is where the DCO has been established, established for in the sense that digital economy is the way forward to diversify their economies, and they cannot do it alone. They have to share best practices. So therefore these five member countries created the Digital Cooperation Organization, the first intergovernmental organization focusing on digital economy and fast forward till today we're very proud that we were. Present 16 member states from Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, and we're expanding in size 800 million in population that by itself is a huge consumer market for any technology company that wants to expand. The objective or the mission of DCO is to enable every person, every government, every, uh, company the opportunity to prosper in the digital economy, and that's by facilitating. the connecting the supply and the demand between governments and between the private sector and those 1st 5 countries you started with just for contact with Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Georgia, Kuwait, and Pakistan. Tell me a bit about a tangible example maybe of how you're working with one of the member countries at the moment. It's, you know, it's great to talk in broad brush strokes about digital digital inclusivity in the economy, but what does that look like on a practical level right now in one of your countries? Well, we truly believe that um digital economy is a landscape that looks at digital business enablers and also society as well. And when we look at uh the the um the uh engine that flew flows the digital economy is the private sector. And therefore for any country to really prosper, it needs to have the right legislation policies to enable these private sectors to co-create and co-design solutions with the governments, and this is where sometimes there's a communication gap between the governments and the private sector. This is where we come in. We come in and we look at what is the business landscape of every country and we see where are the gaps, where are the areas of improvement when it comes to policies and regulations we also recommend the um the packages and the incentives to attract the right investments. Last month alone we uh we celebrated uh attracting more than $700 million to Pakistan. All digital digital investments and what's Pakistan going to put that money towards in terms of its digital economy? Oh, in, in multiple either in infrastructure when it comes to connectivity, cloud computing, also, uh, last last year alone, Pakistan included or added to its GDP $3.8 billion because of software exports. So definitely that investment will go into human capital. As well as uh computing power when it comes to AI uh and also looking at enabling the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Talk to us very briefly about how a a country enters the organization. We were chatting a bit backstage and it's, it's an application process. What are you looking for? Well, we're looking for like-minded nations that are willing to change that have the mindset of growth when it comes to betting on digital economy, and that is has the openness uh to uh welcome uh best practices from other countries and share the competitive advantage that they have with other countries. And my colleague Mihal mentioned slightly earlier about last week being a big week for the region. We have President Trump here signing multiple deals with the Middle East. Um, what does that mean for you? What do those tech-focused deals mean for the work you're doing at the DCO? Definitely this is an enabling uh opportunity uh considering that, uh, Saudi and also if we look at the region, the the, um, uh, the Gulf, um, is positioned in a very unique, uh, uh, positioning, having, um, uh, uh, very affordable and cheap energy and diversifications of also resources of energy, uh, very powerful in infrastructure when it comes to connectivity. You know, imagine that Saudi alone has 77% 5G connectivity, which is double the world's average, so that's very powerful when it comes to computing power for AI data centers and and others. Uh, third, the geographic location connecting Asia, Europe, and Africa, and last but not least, a very tech savvy youth, uh, uh, population. Um, from the Gulf, 60 million in population, more than 80% are under the age of 30, so very youthful, very tech savvy. So what does that mean is that this region is a great infrastructure for any innovative technologies going forward. And how does the organization work with the biggest governments in the world, the Americas, the European governments? What does that cooperation? Well, we, we work with them as any other countries, we. Um, we enable them with the know-how and the guidance that we have and as well as we, um, we try to connect them with our member states to get, uh, more, uh, collective, um, uh, shared best practices. Therefore, we're very much strengthening our relationship with the European Union, with ASEAN, with uh with African Union, as well as, uh, we have a great partnership with the GCC Council, Arab League and OIC. We believe that. Not only are we uh enabling our member states, but how can we enable other countries through the best practices that we have done throughout our member states. Let's continue the conversation about AI for a second. Um, AI is a world of opportunity, but at the same time it's expensive to run. It's very resource intensive to keep data centers going. How are you thinking about making sure that the widespread adoption of AI in the global north doesn't deepen the divide that we're seeing in terms of the global South, and how do we ensure that they are not only consumers of this emerging technology but also producers of it? Well, that's what keeps us up at night, really it's a, it's a huge concern that we have um we have uh we've been established to bridge that digital divide. Now we're faced with a new divide which is bigger, which is the AI divide. If we have 2.6 billion people today that are even not connected, they're not even on the internet. They don't even have devices, they're they're off the grid. So imagine how are they going to use AI. We looked at last year alone it was $300 billion investment in AI, but how many countries, a handful of countries are investing and a handful of countries are innovating. That means that there's a huge portion of the world that don't even have access to such kind of technology to create their local content. So what are you doing to help? Great question. Well, what we're trying to do is we're trying to decentralize. the capacities and the computing power, meaning that we believe that every country has its competitive advantage. There are countries that have the capabilities to create their computing power and capacities like the likes of Saudi, Kuwait, uh, uh, UAE, Qatar, and, and so on, but there are other countries that have the brain power and have the talents that can create that that local content and create these innovations. And here is where we're working first on infrastructure, creating decentralized capacities within our member states where countries around that capacity can benefit from that computing power. Second is that we're creating frameworks, new frameworks for intellectual property and also how to share the local content between the countries. And third is how to create shared pools of talents. Between the member what does that look like? That's a very interesting point. How does that happen, sharing a pool of talent? Well, um, for instance, uh, and we're just testing it here right now in, in Saudi there is since there is computing power, what we did is a program looking at AI and healthcare, for instance. So we identify a challenge and then we call out for talents from our member states. Now we have 7 scientists, one from Nigeria, one from Pakistan. One from Morocco, one from Jordan, and 3 from Saudi that come together and work on solving the solution. After they solve the solution, then we, we help in monetizing and commercializing that solution to become a company where other states like Qatar and like Kuwait are investing in in these ventures. That's really powerful. Um, we're in a room full of women who care about the future of women and girls. What are the unique challenges that come with engaging women in the digital economies in these countries that are not as well served at the moment? Um, and what can we as leaders, as business people in the room, do to help? Well, that's a, um, that's a topic that is very dear to my heart and uh it scares me when I read reports that by 2030, 350 million women will not have access to internet. That by itself is not just only a social loss but also an economical loss and this is where we really need to invest heavily and not only um upskilling women in uh in digital capabilities but also giving that access on how to use the technology because it's a learning platform as well as an economical. Platform to find jobs. So what we have done in DCO is a program called We Eleva which is to move women traditional businesses into online businesses, and that's powerful because that's direct contribution to GDP and job creation till now we supported 127 women businesses in Rwanda and now we're moving into Nigeria and and we're moving to the Middle East as well. And it came from a story if you may. I know that the time is off, but, but it's a it's a very um warming story from a woman from Apa, and I met her. She's a widow. She has 6 kids, and the thing is, she, she, her education was till high school, and she created these senses, soaps, perfumes from a distinct, uh, rose called the ha of roses. And she sells to only the the city of her life, but she wanted to expand her, her, her, her business more. So she knocked on, on, on my door once and said, Are you the Melia here? And I said, Yes. They told me you can fix my business. I want you to move me online, so we supported and helped her by creating an e-commerce solution, but that's not enough. We have to support in the financial acumen, training and marketing, payment gateways, uh, um, supply chain, delivery, and so on. Now fast forward 2 years, she's selling to 90 locations in the world, and she recruited 60 other women. And she has a revenue of roughly $100 million every year. So that's the power of just moving a women business into an online business. Secretary General, it's such important work. Thank you for telling us about it. We'll all be watching closely to see what you do next, and thank you for joining us today. Thank you for having me. Thank you.

In today's rapidly evolving workplace, organizations are facing unprecedented challenges in employee mental health and organizational resilience. How can companies effectively evaluate mental health vendors to ensure their solutions are customizable, scalable, and aligned with employee needs while staying within budget? Join three experts in the field for an insightful discussion about how to create an engaging, evidence-based mental health benefits strategy that is a cornerstone of organizational performance and employee well-being—and how to prove its ROI.  

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