The Arab International Women’s Forum and Pfizer Middle East are delighted to share that we will be hosting the second session in our high-level virtual panel series in March 2023, as part of our collaboration titled ‘D&I by Design: Women’s Leadership & Legacy in Health’ and launched in December 2022.
In 2022-2023, AIWF and Pfizer will collaborate on a virtual panel series exploring salient diversity issues impacting women’s inclusion in global and MENA health. In the first session, held in December 2022, we discussed the importance of mentoring and nurturing the next generation of women leaders in health through role modelling, recognition, and visibility of women in discovery, research, and innovation.
In the second session, Mainstreaming and embedding DEI into healthcare cultures and practices (which will be held on Thursday 09 March 2023), we will address challenges, opportunities and strategies to elevate gender diversity and inclusion in healthcare sector spaces and in both corporate and research / discovery / practice-based working culture. In the third and final session, we will examine key drivers of diversity in the innovation landscape and on clinical trials. The proceedings of each panel event will be synthesised to culminate in a report and recommendations / toolkit to be published jointly by AIWF and Pfizer in 2023.
The next panel event in the series will take place as a Zoom webinar on 09 March 2022 at 12:00 UK / 16:00 UAE,and will be the second of the three roundtable events that we will undertake between 2022 and 2023. In this session, a high-level D&I panel will explore the importance of mainstreaming and embedding DEI into healthcare working spaces and cultures. Specifically, we will discuss:
- Encouraging equal representation in hiring and promotion processes;
- Providing diversity and inclusion training for employees;
- Implementing flexible work arrangements for women and families;
- Offering mentorship and sponsorship programs;
- Encouraging open communication and creating a safe space for diverse perspectives;
- Celebrating and promoting the achievements of diverse employees; and
- Evaluating and addressing unconscious bias in policies and practices.
Speakers for this panel session, which will be moderated by Yomna Kotb (Director, Policy & Public Affairs ELII Cluster (Egypt, Levant, Iraq & Iran), will include:
Dr Oualae Alami, AIWF Board Member & Global Influenza Lead, Pfizer
Dr Naeema Al Gasseer, World Health Organization Representative, Egypt
Dr Hanan Gewefel, CEO, Women & Metal Imaging, Egypt
Dr Reem Al-Ajlouni, Director, Jordan Breast Cancer Program, Jordan
Through this initiative, AIWF and Pfizer aim to create a positive and impactful platform to develop the next generation of women leaders in health, mainstreaming a powerful shift in workplace culture towards true gender parity and encouraging both corporate policy change as well as a decisive shift in the narrative on women’s leadership in health.
Registration is now open here.
