Ambar Amleh is a Founding Partner at Palestine’s early-stage start-up investment fund, Ibtikar, which she championed and helped design, structure and fundraise for.
Ibtikar fills a critical funding gap faced by Palestinian entrepreneurs between seed and venture capital (VC), and is currently the only active VC in Palestine.
For the past several years, Amleh has been directly involved in supporting Palestinian entrepreneurs. As the program manager of Palestine for a New Beginning (PNB), a Palestinian non-profit company focused on entrepreneurial development, Amleh grew PNB from an idea and small board leadership, to an established Palestinian institution. Through PNB, Amleh organised the yearly Celebration of Innovation, a Palestine-wide competition of entrepreneurs, and the follow-up support to these entrepreneurs; as well as Global Entrepreneurship Week in Palestine.
Amleh is a member of the 23rd class of Kauffman Fellows, and was named one of the ‘50 Most Influential Women in the Arab World’ by CEO Middle East Magazine and ‘20 Women VCs of MENA’ by MENAbytes. She has an MBA from the Thunderbird School of Global Management and a marketing degree from Arizona State University.
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Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) was formed on 1 January, 1992, by a decree issued by the late
Sheikh Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum to merge Dubai Electricity Company and Dubai Water Department, which
had been operating independently before then. Both organisations were established by the late Sheikh Rashid
bin Saeed Al Maktoum in 1959. Dubai Government fully supported the Electricity Company and the Water
Department to provide Dubai’s citizens and residents with a continuous and reliable supply of electricity
and water. Since then, DEWA has made considerable achievements, to be ranked as one of the best utilities in
the world. DEWA provides services today to more than 900,000 customers with a happiness rate that reached
95% in 2018.
The UAE, represented by Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA), has maintained its first global
ranking, for the third consecutive year, with scores of 100% in all Getting Electricity indicators in the
World Bank’s Doing Business 2020 report. The report measures the ease of doing business in 190 economies
around the world. DEWA achieved competitive results in global benchmarking, surpassing the private sector
and major European and American utilities in efficiency and reliability. DEWA raised the efficiency of its
energy production by using the latest technologies and adopting technological innovations, surpassing
European and American utilities, by reducing losses from electricity transmission and distribution networks
to 3.3% compared to 6–7% in the US and Europe. DEWA also achieved the lowest customer minutes lost per year
(CML) in the world of 2.39 CML compared to 15 minutes in Europe and was also able to reduce water network
losses to 6.5% in 2018 compared to 15% in North America, which is one of the best results in the world.
