President, CEO &
Co-Founder of WEConnect International
Elizabeth A. Vazquez is the President, CEO, and Co-Founder of WEConnect International. She is a world leader in women’s economic empowerment, global supplier diversity and inclusion.
Vazquez is the co-author of the book, “Buying for Impact: How to Buy from Women and Change Our World.” She sits on the Walmart Global Women’s Economic Empowerment Initiative’s International Advisory Council, the Procter & Gamble Supplier Diversity Advisory Council, the Global Citizen and CHIME FOR CHANGE Girls’ and Women’s Committee, and is a Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards Jury Member for North America.
In 2019, Vazquez “rang the bell” at the New York Stock Exchange in support of women business owners around the world. She sits on several Boards of Directors, and is a W20 and B20 Representative to advance G20 commitments. She also served as a member of the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment from 2016-2017 with the heads of the UN, the World Bank, the IFM, IKEA Switzerland, the President of Costa Rica and other distinguished world leaders.
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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.