Hana’a Mehyar Awad has spent all of her 24 years in Hebron, the largest Palestinian city in the West Bank. Hebron often makes international headlines because of political tension and violence. But as a resident, Awad knows that it’s also a busy hub of West Bank trade, generating a third of the area’s GDP—and that the city has even more potential to drive economic growth.
That business potential, unfulfilled in part because of a lack of consumer and investor confidence, sparked Awad’s interest in corporate governance. After she graduated from Palestine Ahliya University College’s corporate governance program, an IFC initiative to promote good corporate governance in the Middle East and North Africa, she landed a job at the Palestine Investment Bank.
Applying corporate governance principles like transparency and disclosure “can improve business performance here and enhance the confidence of customers, as well as enhance our country's ability to face risks,” she says. “The course helped me so much that I’d like to see it offered in all universities in the West Bank and Gaza.”
Training future leaders like Awad to help strengthen the Palestinian economy is a primary goal of the corporate governance program—part of a decade-long project between IFC and the Palestine Capital Market Authority (PCMA) to build local capacity. IFC partnered in 2014 with the PCMA and five Palestinian universities to offer the corporate governance course, based on IFC’s curriculum, every semester. More than 1,100 students, including Awad, have already graduated.
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