Emirati businesswoman Marwa Al Mansoori speaks to Villa 88 about forging her own path, remaining anchored in her identity, and creating greater opportunities for the women who follow in her footsteps.

Editor-in-Chief: Asma Al Fahim
Words by: Lindsay Judge
Creative Direction/Production: Beya Bou-Harb
Photography: Sophia Cliffe
Art Director: Egor Andryushin
Stylist: Polina Shabelnikova
Hair and Make-up: Safiyah Cassim
Assistant Stylist: Riha Mehindi
Special Thanks: Em Sherif Deli UAE

When Marwa Al Mansoori was appointed to the board of the Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ADCCI) in 2021, she joined one of the institutions shaping the capital’s economic future.
However, occupying a position of influence was only the beginning for Marwa. The value of the role and her contribution to it lies in how that authority is used, what it changes, and who gains greater opportunities because of it.

Alongside her board position, Marwa is also the Vice President at Siemens, focusing on digital transformation and AI. In 2020, she was selected to represent Abu Dhabi’s private sector on its Economic Cooperation Committee, following her 2019 candidacy for the Federal National Council.

On paper, her career spans entrepreneurship, private-sector representation, and institutional leadership. What connects those roles is a practical belief in using decision-making power to create opportunities for other women.

As the UAE gets ready to commemorate Emirati Women’s Day 2026, Marwa reflects on building a career without a blueprint, leading with an identity grounded in the region, and ensuring that the women who follow will inherit a clearer path to authority.

Building Without a Blueprint

Early in her career, Marwa learned to act on ideas before there was a structure to support them. “That mindset was forged long before any boardroom, in the early years of building something from nothing,” she tells Villa 88. “There were years of raising capital when the idea was still just a conviction on paper, of building the technical infrastructure myself when there was no team yet to hand it to.”

This taught her the practical demands of business in advance. “I learned to lead a team before I had the luxury of experience, to manage client relationships that demanded more trust than I’d yet earned, to build partnerships from a position of scarcity rather than strength, and to market a vision before the results existed to market instead,” she says. These lessons would become her most valuable education.
“That period taught me more about negotiation, patience, and resilience than any single meeting ever could,” she explains. It also taught her that no achievement comes without its own challenges.

“Resilience, for me, was never defined by a single dramatic crisis – it was built in the quiet decisions no one else was watching closely enough to applaud,” Marwa states. “One of the greatest challenges I faced was choosing to slow down at the exact moment when rapid growth was within reach.”

She explains by narrating how, when company expansion became possible, she chose to trust her own instincts over the desire to rush into big decisions. “Every external signal said to take it,” she says. “But I sensed the foundation underneath wasn’t ready to carry that kind of weight yet, and I said no.” “Advisors questioned the decision,” she shares. “Peers around me scaled ahead without hesitation, and for a while, restraint looked like falling behind…”

Only later did the value of that restraint become clear – when others who moved faster than she did started to fail.

“A year later, that discipline was the reason everything I had built was still standing, while others who moved faster didn’t survive their own momentum,” she explains. “That was the first thing resilience taught me – sometimes, the hardest form of leadership is choosing patience when everyone around you is choosing speed.”

Defining Her Own Path

Commercial decisions were not her only test. In rooms where global institutions were at the table, Marwa confronted a more personal question – how much of herself should she adjust or change in order to be understood?

“I remember a moment early in my career,” she recalls, “where I felt the pull to hold back my directness, my references, my certainty, to feel more at ease in a room shaped by a different set of expectations.”

But, she realised, in the long run, holding back could carry a cost beyond her own career. “Blending in would have cost more than my own voice,” she explains. “It would have cost every young woman watching who needed to see that she didn’t have to shrink to be believed.”

That decision soon became a defining moment for Marwa, changing how she communicated her authority. “I stopped translating myself into something more familiar to others, and let my perspective, shaped by this region, this culture, this upbringing, speak fully in its own voice,” she notes.

After this pivot, Marwa began to recognise that being confident in her own abilities would take her far. “What I discovered is that the most powerful thing I could offer wasn’t fluency in someone else’s framework,” she elaborates. “It was fluency in my own, delivered with enough clarity and conviction that the room had no choice but to meet me there, and to make more room for the women who would walk in after me.”

From Presence to Influence

We Emerge Stronger and Better, the theme of this year’s Emirati Women’s Day, has particular significance for Marwa. “Over the past decade, I have watched something remarkable unfold,” she reveals. “Emirati women are moving from simply being present in rooms of decision to becoming the ones shaping what happens inside them.”

“To me,” she adds, “this day has never simply been a celebration – it is a mirror. It asks each of us who has been given opportunity to look closely and think about whether we are living up to the vision that made that opportunity possible in the first place.”

The learning is deeply personal, reminding her that nothing she has was built by her alone. “It was made possible by a generation of leadership that looked at the potential of Emirati women and refused to let it go unclaimed,” Marwa explains. “A decade ago, we spoke of access – how many women had finally entered the boardroom, the laboratory, the ministry. Today, we speak of legacy – what women are building once they arrive, and how deeply their leadership is reshaping entire industries, not simply joining them.”

For the ADCCI Board Member, this change is as significant as any milestone. “That shift, from being counted to being determinative, is one of the most moving transformations I have witnessed in my lifetime,” she says.

An Archive of Becoming

On a personal level, jewellery holds significance for Marwa not simply for its beauty or material value, but for the memories it carries over time. “I don’t have one single piece that holds all the meaning, and I’ve come to think that’s exactly as it should be,” she says. “Life rarely asks us to carry its meaning in one object.”

Instead, significance accumulates gradually. “It asks us to collect it, quietly, across many moments, and jewellery has simply been my way of doing that,” Marwa shares. “Different pieces have accompanied different chapters of my life, each one a small witness to a version of myself I don’t want time to erase.” One brand she respects for resonating with that idea is Piaget. “There’s a simple truth I’ve come to live by – what is seen is only ever the smallest part of what was built,” Marwa explains. “Piaget’s craftsmanship reflects that idea perfectly – mastery revealed in a finished piece but earned across countless invisible hours before it.”

This relationship between the finished creation and the discipline behind it connects with her own experience. “I recognise that same discipline in my own path,” she continues. “The moments people noticed were never really the moments that shaped me. It was the early mornings, the uncertain decisions, and the work done long before anyone was watching.”

Shaping What Comes Next

Looking ahead, Marwa expresses her future ambitions through what she hopes she can teach other women. “Every strategy shaped, every space claimed, becomes a new stretch of ground on the map – solid, visible, ready to be walked by someone else,” she shares. “That is the work that matters – not a name written across the territory, but ground made strong enough to carry the next woman who stands on it.”

She wants her own progress to remove some of the uncertainty still experienced by those who follow. “Somewhere, a brilliant young Emirati woman is wondering if her ambition fits inside the lines she’s been given,” she notes. “May she inherit a wider map than the one handed to us – a map where ‘ambitious Emirati woman’ is no longer a frontier. A frontier only exists until enough women have walked it. Then it’s simply home ground.”

The ultimate measure of progress for her is that the women who follow will no longer experience leadership as unfamiliar territory, or ambition as an exception. “There will come a day when ‘Emirati woman’ and ‘unstoppable’ are no longer two words placed side by side for effect,” Marwa declares. “They will simply mean the same thing. That is the legacy I am building toward.”