Maryam Ali Ficociello serves on multiple governance, compliance, and sustainability committees, and each time she was recommended for one of those board seats, it was a man who would endorse her.
But when Ficociello gets an opportunity to advocate for a peer to be considered for an open board seat, she has prioritized women. “I know that unless we help the other women have that first opportunity, it just doesn’t happen,” said Ficociello during a leadership lunch Tuesday at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit in Riyadh.
In the U.S., 30% of company board seats for companies listed on the Russell 3000 index are held by women, according to research by 50/50 Women on Boards, a nonprofit aimed at advancing gender balance on corporate boards. And 29% of corporate C-suite positions in the U.S. are held by women, research published by consultancy McKinsey showed last year.
But in Saudi Arabia, research shows that only an estimated 10% of board seats are held by women.
Advancing women in the workforce
Ficociello, who serves as global chief governance officer at real estate developer Red Sea Global, says it can be difficult for women to get their first opportunity to sit on a board. “I just want to say that there is a real challenge,” she added. “If we don’t start getting on boards and have that very first opportunity, then you never start getting more opportunities to sit on boards, because people don’t get to see how you perform.”
Among the commitments outlined in Vision 2030, the state-run program championed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was a goal of lifting women’s labor force participation to 30% by 2030. But Saudi Arabia already achieved that goal and revised it upward to 40% within the next five years.
Other nations in the region, including Qatar and Kuwait, have established multi-year development plans that include commitments to invest more in education, health care, workforce upskilling, and technology, as well as other private industries outside oil, to reduce reliance on the energy sector.
Some leaders say the pace of change they are seeing in Saudi Arabia feels faster than in those other Middle East nations. “There is real systemic investment in workforces, in education, and development,” said Renée McGowan, CEO for India, Middle East & Africa for insurance brokerage and management consultancy Marsh McLennan, who also spoke at the lunch alongside Ficociello and three other Middle East-based female executives.
Collectively the women speaking at the lunch lauded the progress that Saudi Arabia has made in boosting women’s participation in the local workforce. Jena Ladhani, the CEO of global workplace solutions for CBRE, a U.S. commercial real estate services and investment firm, says the field she works in tends to be very male dominated. But she’s observed more women taking jobs in project management, engineering, and facilities management. Ladhani says CBRE has partnered with Princess Nourah Bint Abdulrahman University—a women’s university in Riyadh—to attract more women to jobs in construction.
“We have expats here, and that’s great, but I know that I’m working toward a Saudi taking my role, as is every expat in my business,” said Ladhani. “It’s just a mandate. It’s how we hire.”
Women thriving in sales
Saeeda Jaffar, a senior vice president of global payments company Visa, said that in her office more than half of the Saudi workforce are women. “What actually surprised me was that they actually love sales roles—they love client-facing roles,” said Jaffar, who also serves as group country manager for Visa’s Gulf Cooperation Council.
“It was phenomenal to see them just get in there, hold the room, be very direct, be very, very aggressive when they need to be,” added Jaffar.
Giovanna Carnevali, the executive director of urban planning at ROSHN Group, said that in the field of architecture, women tend to make up more than 50% of the university population in Europe and other western economies. While that’s encouraging, she added that the number of women who have success and international visibility within the architectural field is very low.
Carnevali said that on her team at ROSHN—a real estate development subsidiary of Saudi’s sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund (PIF)—55% are women. That’s a sign, to her, that Vision 2030 is working. “From the construction perspective, I think, here there is more of a chance for women to have stronger visibility,” added Carnevali.
At Red Sea Global, also backed by PIF, Ficociello has been pleased with an investment to help 600 students graduate from vocational programs in hospitality, engineering, and airport and airline management. That training is key as Saudi Arabia has placed a big bet on luring international travelers, with events like the 2034 World Cup and 2030 World Expo coming to the country.
“We didn’t expect that people, that young talent, would want to just, you know, right after high school, do a vocational program and go straight into the workforce,” said Ficociello. “To our surprise, we are very happy with the talent pool.”
