Meet the Power Women of PLAYBOOK, the award-winning membership network that accelerates career growth for women at every level of leadership.
Wafa Alobaidat is the CEO and Co-Founder of Playbook. She is a serial entrepreneur with 14+ years of experience handling more than 5000+ client projects for businesses globally. She has been featured in the Young Global Leaders Class of 2023 ranking, and is a TEDx speaker, a public speaker represented by The Middle East leading speaker’s bureau, MENA Speakers, and a fellow at The Vital Voices GROW, a leading business program whose founder leaders are Hilary Clinton and Madeleine Albright. Wafa has become one of the region’s experts at accelerating career progression for women, having hosted the Women Power Summit, an annual event attracting 6000+ attendees, 314 women speakers, and 280 corporate partners. Wafa was named one of the top 50 most influential women leaders in business by Business In Gulf, and has delivered 50+ talks globally engaging audiences of multiple sectors including the Global Entrepreneurship Summit and the Women Economic Forum KSA.
Shreya Rammohan is the Co-Founder and CMO, PLAYBOOK. She has 10+ years of professional marketing consulting, research & implementation experience across 10 industrial sectors & in 4 regional markets (Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia & UAE) for 80+ brands, and has worked on national level marketing projects in Bahrain and Oman for semi-government organizations, telecom companies, and financial services companies. Shreya served as the Media Leader for the Women Power Network, the largest women empowerment network in MENA, having secured over $3 million in advertising equivalence across notable platforms. She has also led the winning startup Women Who Read, of the Middle East Partnership Initiative by the US Department of State and Bahrain FinTech Bay’s Build for Bahrain program.
Ismahan Al Saad is the Co-Founder and COO, PLAYBOOK. With over 20 years of experience in finance and investments, Ismahan previously served as General Manager of AlSaad Power Projects, an electrical contracting company, where she led major organizational restructuring and business development initiatives. Prior to that, Ismahan spent 12 years at BNP Paribas in banking and finance roles, including Syndication Originator and Senior Banker, where she devised financing strategies and closed deals for government and private sector clients.
Wafa Alobaidat, CEO and Co-Founder of PLAYBOOK, Shreya Rammohan, CMO of PLAYBOOK, and Isamahan Al Saad, COO of PLAYBOOK.
FWM: What led you to launch the global platform, Playbook?
Less than 15% of C-Suite Executives are women, less than 17% of board positions are held by women globally and less than 2.3% of global venture capital funding goes to Female Founders. The global gender economic gap would take almost 300 years to address while the gap in the MENA region would take 115 years. This emphasized the urgency to us of taking charge of the narrative. Since 2018, we established a track record of building engaging offline speaker sessions with 400+ leaders for an audience of 6,000+, audio-based tactical leadership content for podcasts with 150+ Speakers that generated 120,000+ downloads – all around the focal theme of women in leadership. We believe that it is a necessity to elevate the conversation around women in leadership and sought to build the most powerful networking ecosystem that has representative role-models and real-world experiences which is why we built PLAYBOOK. Today we have almost 3,000 members from 200+ cities in 50+ countries representing 900+ companies and 26 industries, committed to changing the face of leadership.
Isamahan Al Saa, COO of PLAYBOOK
FWM: You are known as the Powerful Learning Network. Take us through the Playbook platform.
PLAYBOOK is an edutainment platform. Our Professional Membership Network aims to elevate women into leadership roles and continue to guide them when they get there. We do this through access to cinematic quality masterclasses led by incredible women leaders, workshops & executive speaker sessions, a robust coaching & mentoring program, an active job board, flexible networking opportunities and much more! We’ve built out a career ecosystem that accelerates growth and a community that soundboards with one another to arrive at solutions for both their personal & professional lives. We also pay-it-forward by matching every paid membership with a free-access scholarship distributed through our network of NGOs and other affiliated institutions to support women and young girls from underserved communities.
FWM: The future of work is being driven by our members. Explain.
Firms with Women CEOs and CFOs have produced superior stock price performance compared to the market average, including a 20% increase in stock price momentum and 8% larger stock returns. Organizations that prioritize the advancement of women report as much as 61% higher revenue growth than competitors. Research has further shown that firms with more women in senior positions are more profitable, more socially responsible, and provide safer, higher-quality customer experiences — among many other benefits. By shaping the leaders of tomorrow and setting the tone with leaders of today, our members are certainly driving the future of work. From defining more inclusive HR practices, to more empathetic/emotionally intelligent leadership decisions, to investing in the development of soft skills that aren’t strengths – all this and more is discussed on the platform through our various curated mediums.
Shreya Rammohan, CMO of PLAYBOOK
FWM: How is PLAYBOOK rewriting the rules?
Women executives require more tailor-made learning & development frameworks to pave their own pathways to leadership. PLAYBOOK makes it possible for them to actualise these goals by presenting a more relatable and representative solution for them to lean on. By engaging organizations from a learning & development level to a gender diversity and equity scale, we’re able to influence the considerations placed in building and accelerating growth within their organization.
FWM: Please share the exclusive live events and content for members.
PLAYBOOK is essentially a personalized Career Toolkit that focuses on the personal and professional well-being of an individual. Our members have access to an ever-growing library of masterclasses featuring leading experts that focus on 300+ Pain Points that female executives are actively seeking solutions for. Content is continuously curated in different forms, a blended learning approach based on the learner’s preferences and set to their pace through independent decision-making. Relevant discourse on themes, pain points and conversations that are shaping the Corporate world led by industry experts, thought leaders and renowned academics is addressed on the platform. Playbook’s LIVE Speaker Series and Workshops are designed to connect our membership community with relevant insights that could shift their perspective or expand their understanding about global, local and regional decision-making and innovation. Additionally, we’ve been rolling out offline experiences and soon to launch them in almost 20 countries led by our members.
FWM: Share your vision for the Playbook in 2023.
We have a lot of exciting projects, campaigns, initiatives and more in the works. We’re looking forward to taking PLAYBOOK to a wider audience and understanding our members from a closer lens to be able to drive more valuable and meaningful experiences for them.
www.get-playbook.com
