{"id":2987,"date":"2021-03-10T11:53:51","date_gmt":"2021-03-10T11:53:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.iese.edu\/standout\/?p=2987"},"modified":"2024-04-22T06:15:48","modified_gmt":"2024-04-22T06:15:48","slug":"empowering-saudi-women-success-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.iese.edu\/standout\/empowering-saudi-women-success-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Amna Alyamani. Empowering Saudi women. Success stories"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Amna Alyamani, an MBA graduate, returned to her home country of Saudi Arabia to set up a bakery-caf\u00e9 that employs only women.<\/blockquote><\/span><\/div>[vc_column_text css_animation=”bottom-to-top”]Amna Alyamani returned to Saudi Arabia after finishing her MBA, where she dreamed of empowering women <\/strong>and putting into action her new entrepreneurial skills \u2013 one croissant at a time.<\/p>\n

Alyamani, a Class of 2019 MBA, is set up a bakery-caf\u00e9 in her home city of Jeddah that employs only women: three the first year, and another six the following year. If all goes well, in the third year she will begin franchising, with an estimated nine employees per location.<\/p>\n

Amna Bakery was founded in Sep ’19 on the grounds that the hospitality industry in Saudi Arabia needs to be more inclusive, empowering women to learn and grow in the industry.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But if the scale is initially small, the ambitions are not. \u201cThe objective is to empower women and create jobs,\u201d she says. As someone who trained formally as a pastry chef, she wants to start small and scale once quality and training standards are in place.<\/p>\n

The bakery produces high-quality but reasonably priced breads, croissants and other pastries, as well as sweets such as brownies, cookies and cakes. It sells fresh juices, teas and weekly roasted coffee as well. Her production estimate for the first year was around 90,000 units.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s 90,000 brownies, cookies and pieces of cake produced by women who historically have had limited opportunities in the labor market but who in recent years have been allowed to work in sectors<\/strong>, such as hospitality, once closed to them.\u00a0 \u201cI want to empower more people to work,\u201d she says. \u201cI will give you the tools and the training to be able to work.\u201d[\/vc_column_text]

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