NBB grooming women for leadership roles

National Bank of Bahrain (NBB) is spearheading an exclusive programme to support the accession of female executives into leadership roles. Titled the ‘Director Development Programme for Women’, the initiative conceived by NBB is being executed in partnership with Tamkeen, the GCC Board Directors Institute (BDI) and EMIC training. The move is described as a combined effort to further promote female empowerment in Bahrain and help ‘break glass ceilings’.

The programme will kick off with its first workshop - ‘Empowering Women Directors’ - on 2- 3 October 2019 at the Four Seasons Hotel Bahrain. Over 50 participants currently holding executive roles across the industry have confirmed their participation. A second workshop on ‘The Director’s World’ will be held in February 2020. Another two are planned until the end of next year. The year-long workshops aim at creating a pool of women executives that can be tapped in to fill executive positions.

Programmes such as these “demonstrate our commitment to making a notable difference in the industry,” Jean-Christophe Durand, Chief Executive Officer of NBB, said. Dana Buheji, Chief Human Resources Officer at NBB, said the bank is taking a step to nurture the next generation of the female leaders by providing them “with the tools and the visibility to help them reach those positions.”

“This is the purpose of the programme and why we are so committed to taking it nationally. “Board rooms are generally dominated by males, this is a common phenomenon not only in Bahrain but across the globe,” Buheji added.