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Magazine |
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Women in Business International
Crescent Court,
102 Victor Road, Teddington,
Middlesex TW11 8SS
Tel: +44 (0)20 8943 3630
Fax: +44 (0)20 8943 3701
email: info@forwomeninbusiness.com |
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Untitled Document
| About us |
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 Christine
McCafferty MP
Christine (or Chris, as she prefers
to be known) has been Member of Parliament for Calder Valley since
1997. In Parliament
she has pursued her long standing interests in women’s issues
and equality, pushing for a reduction in VAT on female sanitary products,
supporting the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 and introducing a
ten minute rule bill to make it illegal to hold peoples passport’s
without their permission.
A welfare worker with strong local roots and a particular interest
in women’s health, Christine McCafferty came into Parliament
in 1997. The campaign was chronicled in a book, “This England”,
by Pete Davies.
Born in Manchester in 1945, Chris McCafferty was educated at Whalley
Range Grammar School in Manchester and in Melbourne, Australia. She
worked in health and education welfare, arrived in Calderdale in the
early 1970’s and ran the Well-Woman Centre from 1989. Elected
to Hebden Royd Town Council and Calderdale District Council in 1991,
she was actively involved in a large number of municipal and charitable
organisations, as a Police Authority representative, prison visitor
and school governor.
In Parliament, Chris has sat on the Procedure Committee until November
1999 and the Select Committee on International Development from 2001
to 2005. She was the first woman to be elected Chair of the All-Party
Group on Population, Development and Reproductive Health. Chris is
also the founding parliamentarian of the All-Party Friends of Islam
Group and is currently the Chair.
Chris is also the Chair of the All-Party Group on Guiding and is
the Parliamentary Patron for Women in Business International which
has become an important women’s economic empowerment network
for women in Britain, the Arab world and the wider international
world. Women in Business organised the first businesswomen’s
forum in Saudi Arabia and more recently the first pan-African forum
in South Africa.
As a delegate to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe
and the Western European Assembly, Chris regularly speaks on women’s
and health issues and recently wrote the Parliamentary Assembly’s
Sexual Health Strategy for Europe. She is currently working on the
HIV/AIDS Strategy for Europe.
Visit Christine McCafferty
website
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 Ahmed
Suleiman MBE, KFO
An International Lawyer, he has worked in Switzerland
specialising as private corporate and legal advisor to high net individuals.
He has managed companies under insolvency restrictions and at various
stages of the industrial process; one such example being a furniture
manufacturing operation in Dublin. Mr Suleiman has led various acquisition
teams, one such team was the preferential bid team for the purchase
of British Shipbuilders.
Formerly seconded to the Department of Trade and Industry of the British
Government (Trade Partners UK) as its youngest Trade and Investment
Advisor advising on UK bilateral trade to Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia,
Yemen and Libya. This included advising Marks & Spencer on their
franchise strategy in the Middle East, and editing the definitive
guide to Agency Law in the Arabian Peninsula.
With extensive experience in the public sector, he has advised Members
of Parliament, Central and Local Government and International Governments
on a wide range of policy issues; his policy papers have been over
a wide-range of social and societal development issues.
Mr Suleiman was the special advisor to the Chief Executive of The
Community Foundation, contributing to its books on Community Economic
Development. In the 1987, he formed the Public Affairs. Company –
Politikplus, which served many blue-chip clients advising on a range
of issues from cultural diversity to embryo research, to political
participation and social democratisation, representing commercial
interests and international affairs.
Ahmed is also Middle East Consultant to the Centre for International
Briefing.
He founded the Women in Business Initiative in1997, which has now
become a leading training and business networking initiative between
the UK, Europe and Middle East, which is expanding to include Africa
and the Indian Sub-Continent.
Mr Suleiman is also a working Director of a number of companies involved
in the construction and property development sector. Dundridge Developments
in Devon has won critical acclaim for its development in UK national
media. International Property Development includes work with and on
behalf of the Mosaique Hotel Group (who are developing several 5 star
hotels in Paris and Barcelona) and The Amiri Group in Sotogrande,
Spain.
In 2001 he founded the All Party Parliamentary Group The Friends of
Islam ,to which he is the Advisor.
Ahmed also sits on the boards, as a working trustee, for a number
of charities, including Saheli All Wales Women’s Project, working
on the protection of women from Domestic Violence and Abuse.
In 1997 Ahmed was awarded an MBE for services
to Middle East exports in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List.
In 2006 Ahmed Suleiman was presented with Knight First Class of the
Royal Order of Francis I (KFO). |
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 Tara
Culhane
Tara Culhane started working for Hilal International
UK Ltd, part of the Al Hilal Group in Bahrain in 1987. In 1990
she was appointed as the UK Director with complete responsibility
for the running of the company. Since moving into this role,
she has increased profitability through sales team management,
including benchmarking of company productivity targets. The company’s
interests have been diversified from initial base of advertising
sales to a holding company for exhibition sales, conference organisation,
print and design, contract publishing and most recently into
public relations.
She is also the Director of Woodbarn Properties Ltd, a property management
company established in 1996, which has developed an ex hospital site and
refurbished it into 21 town houses . These are now 100% let and managed
by Woodbarn.
Tara has been actively involved in the growth of the initiative to an annual
international event. |
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 Ann
Thomson
Ann
Thomson joined the Middle East Association after having spent 25
years in the Hotel and Catering industry. She is the Manager
and her responsibilities encompass all of the organisational and
administrative tasks to ensure that all social events are a success.
Her wealth of experience and skill ensures that all functions both
internal and off site run smoothly and efficiently. Making sure that
guests and visitors receive a warm welcome as well as respecting
their correct cultural requirements is a small but important part
of Ann's role within the Middle East Association.
She has been associated
since the first event with Women in Business International in the United
Kingdom and Middle East. |
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 Lynne
Franks
Author & entrepreneur
Lynne Franks, worked in her father’s butcher shop at the
age of twelve, left school at sixteen, worked as a young journalist
on Petticoat, the UK’s first weekly young women’s
magazine when she was eighteen and started her own public relations
firm from her kitchen table at the age of twenty-one.
One of the best-known public relations consultants in the world, Lynne
is also a highly reputed newspaper columnist, author and authority on women
in business, sustainability and consumer lifestyles. In the years since
she began building her PR agency, she has advised and guided multinational
and non-profit organisations around the globe.
Lynne also created the major U.K. event What Women Want in ’95 to
draw attention to the changing position of women in society. Prior to attending
the Beijing women’s conference, she chaired the UK’s first
women’s radio station and became a spokesperson on women’s
issues, life-work balance and socially responsible business practices.
She has written several books including The SEED Handbook: The Feminine
Way to Create Business published in 2000 throughout the English speaking
world, Germany and Japan, to be followed by other countries including China.
SEED, an acronym for Sustainable Enterprise and Empowerment Dynamics, is
also a global network aimed at training and empowering women.
The SEED Associate programme is being launched throughout the world in
2003/4. SEEDLink will be launched in partnership with Business Link For
London in Autumn 2003.
Lynne is currently working on the development of SEED, together with its
not-for-profit division SEEDWorks; has recently completed her new book,
GROW, The Modern Woman’s Handbook to be published by Hay House in
2004, and speaks and delivers workshops on social entrepreneurship and
women in business.
Lynne Franks is presently based in London and Spain. She has two children,
Joshua, a writer and stand-up comic and Jessica, an author specialising
in personal development for teenage girls. |
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 Sarah
Al Ayed
VICE PRESIDENT,
SAUDI CREATIVE COMMUNICATIONS SERVICES (SACCS/TRACCS) Managing Director
of SACCS – KSA
Sarah Al-Ayed is co-founder of Saudi Creative Communications Services
(SACCS), the first entirely Saudi public relations company that has
grown to become the region’s leading PR public relations group
with offices in Jeddah (HQ), Riyadh, Dubai, Cairo, Amman and Kuwait
and affiliate offices in Oman, Lebanon, and Syria.
Educated at the American School in Amman, Jordan, she received
a BA in English Literature and Linguistics from King Abdul Aziz University
in Jeddah in 1997. Currently Vice-President of SACCS KSA, Sarah a
accomplished and experienced PR practioner and directs a group of
major regional and multi-national accounts.
Sarah and her team at
SACCS have also been handling the media relations
program for the annual Jeddah Economic Forum for the past two years
(2004 and 2005). She has also studied fashion merchandising and modeling;
and has coordinated and organized over 40 fashion shows in Jeddah
and Amman.
Sarah is a member of the Saudi Businesswomen’s Committee (part
of Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry) and has been invited
on numerous occasions to speak at regional and international conferences
and events. Recently Sarah was the panel speaker during the 2004
Women in Business International Forum in London, ‘Women in
Leadership’ conference in Dubai and the International Public
Relations Association Annual PR Conference in Dubai for 2004. She
is also a member of the media committee of the National Home Health
Care Foundation in the Western Region of Saudi Arabia. |
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