Reem Badran
JORDAN
The daughter of former Jordanian prime minister Mudar Badran, Reem Badran is chief executive of Kuwaiti Jordanian Holding Company, which has $122m to invest in sectors ranging from tourism to mining. Ms Badran, 45, obtained a degree in business administration and English literature in Amman and a Masters in international affairs and Middle Eastern studies in Washington before starting her career. She spent 10 years at the Jordan Investment Board, a government body, where she reformed areas of economic policy and helped negotiate a free trade agreement with the US. In 2005 Ms Badran joined KJHC, one of whose largest current projects is to partly fund and manage a $1bn real estate project in the Dead Sea area. This year she also established an investment company in Jordan for Kuwait Finance House, the oil-rich state’s first Islamic bank. “We have $50m to invest and we hope to double that by the end of the year,” she says. Ms Badran is a co-founder of the Jordan branch of the International Women’s Forum. She speaks proudly of her daughter, who is studying finance at university in Virginia: “Later on, I hope that we can do something together.”

Sheikha al-Bahar
KUWAIT
Described as “the billion dollar banker”, Sheikha Al-Bahar has reached the summit of the Gulf’s financial community. She started as a trainee at NBK and now, as group general manager, corporate banking, oversees more than $12bn of assets and almost 150 employees. She is also responsible for relationships with domestic corporate and institutional clients, along with international corporations operating in Kuwait, and has worked on some of the country’s largest deals, including Kuwait’s Mobile Telecommunications’ $3.5bn acquisition of Celtel International, one of the largest mobile operators in Africa. She is passionate about encouraging young women to enter the professional world – lecturing at schools and universities. “If you want to succeed you need a clear goal of what you want,” she says. “When I first arrived at the bank I told them that I wanted to be the general manager, they thought I was just this crazy 20-year old. But I did it. And there are many young women out there who can as well.”