Her Excellency Najla Al-Awadhi
Her Excellency Najla Al-Awadhi is a former Member of Parliament of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). She is one of the first women in the history of the UAE to become a member of the UAE’s Parliament, and also its youngest parliamentarian.
Her Excellency Al-Awadhi began her two year parliament term in February 2007. She served on the Education, Youth, Media and Culture Committee, and also the FNC steering committee which was set up to develop a scheme to modernize the parliament’s practices and overall effectiveness. She previously served on the Foreign Affairs, Planning, Petroleum, Mineral Wealth, Agriculture and Fishery Committee.
In addition to being the first female from the UAE to launch and head a free to air satellite tv channel, she is also the first woman from a Gulf Cooperation Country to hold a senior executive post in a state run media organization.
She serves as the CEO of Dubai Media Incorporated Channels (DMI), a media group which operates four free-to-air satellite channels that are owned by the government of Dubai. DMI channels include Dubai TV, Dubai One, Sama Dubai, Dubai Sports & Noor Dubai. She is also the General Manger of Dubai One.
Her climb to corporate leadership positions in the media landscape of the UAE, specifically that of television, has contributed to the encouragement of UAE women to join the burgeoning field of media, once viewed as a strictly male dominated industry.
She is a board member of the Young Arab Leaders and heads the UAE chapter’s education initiative; an initiative which seeks to provide higher education opportunities for talented UAE nationals. She sits on the Advisory Board of the University of Southern California’s Center on Public Diplomacy, and is a board member of Dubai Women’s Establishment.
Since May 2007 Ms Al-Awadhi has been a monthly columnist for ‘Gulf News,’ the leading English news paper in the UAE. She graduated from the University of New Hampshire magna cum laude with a degree in History; there she was president of the Muslim Student Association, the Human Rights Committee and also a judicial advisor.
