Women Entrepreneus in MENA

  Please join us Friday when our speaker will be Areen Shahbari. Areen has taught in the United States, Chile, Jordan, Palestine, Morocco, Turkey, and Mexico. She is also the Chief Executive Officer of Cactus Int., a company that she founded in 2013 to promote women entrepreneurship in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region. Areen is a social entrepreneur, a business consultant, and a lecturer on entrepreneurship, strategic management, marketing, and effective communication at Harvard University Extension School and Simmons School of Business.

  Areen provides consulting services to local and international entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial companies, leads workshops and training sessions on networking, negotiation, entrepreneurship, communicating across cultures, and persuasion, and instructs courses on women leadership and entrepreneurship. Prior to her teaching and entrepreneurial career, Shahbari worked in the media industry for ten years as a journalist, a TV programming director and a TV host. She hosted six TV shows and interviewed hundreds of professionals, half of whom are women.

  Areen is a highly rated instructor at Harvard University Extension School and Simmons School of Business where she received the 2016 and 2017 MSM excellence in teaching award. She is fluent in three languages, holds a BA in psychology and communication, and an MBA in entrepreneurship from Simmons School of Business, where she was a Fulbright scholar.

  Cactus provides MENA women with the tools they need to become successful entrepreneurs. Since the company's founding in 2013, the company has provided business courses, workshops, and counseling services to over 1,200 women from most of MENA countries. Cactus flagship course is its business plan course that teaches women how to identify business opportunities, write business plans, create pitch decks, and pitch their businesses confidently. The BP course includes online pre-recorded business training, live business training, and one-on-one consultation.

  So far 100+ women graduated from the business plan course with a success rate of over 60%. Cactus is based here in the Bay Area, and is made up of diverse team members from the US and MENA countries. Cactus vision is to enable women to build, develop and turn the universe into a safer, happier, and a better place to live in.