During our existence at CEO Women, we had the privilege to interview Dr. Hajar El Haddaoui, a remarkable person whose story is nothing short of extraordinary. From the moment we began our conversation, it was evident that this was no ordinary interview.
Who is Dr. Hajar El Haddaoui?
Dr. Hajar is the Chief Executive Officer at the Circular Economy Company. She is a senior director in Switzerland at NTT DATA. She is a member of the Board of Directors at Swiss Leaders. She is on the advisory board at WIN Women’s International and WINConference. Her responsibilities have been focused on corporate strategy, transformation, change, and innovation in both global and regional contexts, combining an MBA degree from IMD with a law background. She’s really into making workplaces where everyone feels welcome and is motivated to be their true selves. Hajar has also lived and worked in Europe, Canada, and the Middle East.
Dr. Hajar had a very inspirational talk under the title “Economic Sectors and the Uses of Artificial Intelligence. Her words were full of wisdom, resilience, and a unique perspective. The panel was filled with amazing and inspirational people, such as:
- Dr. Ghada Abdelhadi Kandil (Chief Director of BNY Mellon)
- Ms. Marwa Abbas (General Manager and Technology Leader, IBM Egypt)
- Ms. Inji Borai (Vice President and Country Manager, Egypt, Mastercard)
- Dr. Hajar El Haddaoui (Chief Executive Officer at the Circular Economy Company)
- Ms. Mirna Arif (General Manager, Microsoft Egypt)
- Christine Arida (Strategic Advisor to the Executive President and Board Member at the National Telecom Regulatory Authority of Egypt)
They covered many topics in this panel, such as:
- Women in tech leadership and the financial services sector
- Women in new technologies (breaking down stereotypes)
- Artificial intelligence and its impact on the future of economies
Then, we had the chance to ask her a few questions about her career.
What are the practices that CEC does to be more sustainable?
What we do is really to enable and empower our clients to implement the sustainability strategy, from assessing to the part where we design together, co-create, and implement the sustainable strategy, and that is how we do it and how we empower also the society and kingdom to get to the SDGs and achieve those goals.
From your experiences, how do you think the private sector can do its best to empower women and support sustainable development?
Empowering women, I think, is critical. Gender diversity in every company is not just about having women; it’s also about an increase in the business, the creativity of the team, and diversity. It’s not just about having women on board; it’s also about how to include them and empower them. I think I trust the fact that we need to start from the top and not bottom up and start to have a clear strategy about how we want to implement the empowerment of women at sea level so that they can make decisions and level them up from the bottom up. On the other hand, organizations also need to empower gender from outside, which is universities, and bring top talent from universities to the corporate, public, and semi-public sectors. Finally, it’s important to have a clear development strategy inside the corporation for women and what their strategy is to develop those women inside the company.
In your opinion, what’s the most important thing businesses should do to be more sustainable?
Is to implement it into the strategy of the company. It’s not to hire a chief sustainability officer or just make sustainability a trend in the company but to really make it a part of the company’s strategy.
