Ambassador of Sweden to Qatar, Ewa Polano (second left); and Ann von Staden, with the Qatari female leaders, Maryam Al Kuwari, AGM Development and User Services, QNB, and Aisha Al Mahmoud, IT Director at Qatar Stock Exchange, pose during a photo session.
Doha: Sweden is celebrating International Women’s Day in Stockholm by hosting 20 women from seven countries to partake in “Women in Tech”; a multilateral tech conference promoting leading female perspectives within the IT-field.
This initiative is founded on Sweden’s strong and continuous efforts of emphasising women in all parts of society.
Qatar is among the few prioritised countries represented in the conference. Two Qatari female leaders have been carefully selected to the international expert group attending the conference: Maryam Al Kuwari, AGM Development and User Services, QNB, and Aisha Al Mahmoud, IT Director at Qatar Stock Exchange.
The conference features key note speakers such as world-renowned Sandra Alba Cauffman, Deputy Director of the Earth Science Division, Nasa and Sophia Bendz, former Global Marketing Director at the Swedish digital music service company Spotify, today an investor and advisor to startups as well as a board director.
As a leader in innovation and digital entrepreneurship Sweden is a beacon for innovative tech startups and share its know-how by setting international standards worldwide. Only Silicon Valley lies ahead of Stockholm when looking at number of billion-dollar tech companies per capita. The capital of Sweden is further ranked the second most influential Fin-Tech hub in the world. In line with this objective of being a platform of knowledge sharing and a hub for technical innovations and entrepreneurship; “Women in Tech” is designed for women in the tech industry with the goal of intensifying dialogue, create greater knowledge exchange and broader lasting and reciprocal relationships between international decision-makers and Swedish industry, government agencies, academia, start-ups and entrepreneurs.
Ambassador of Sweden to Qatar, Ewa Polano, is very proud to have invited the two leading Qatari women to this conference and states that “Qatar and Sweden are both small countries with high ambitions in encouraging more women to enter leading roles in general and in the tech industry specifically; and to promote the ones already active”. She added “Women in Tech with its bilateral knowledge sharing approach supports the progressive Qatar National Vision 2030.”
Leading up to the conference, Ambassador Polano invited Maryam Al Kuwari and Aisha Al Mahmoud to a preparatory introduction meeting at the embassy during which she emphasised: “Sending these important Qatari women to Stockholm is a very good example of how I would like to work continuously with exchange between Qatar – Sweden and strengthening the position of women in Qatar, in fields such as technology, trade, culture and diplomacy”.
She concludes by congratulating “Qatar to its impressive achievements with already so many successful Qatari women in key positions”.
