DUBAI // Mary Jane Alvero-Al Mahdi has added another award to her collection after becoming Emirates Woman of the Year on Tuesday night.
Mrs Alvero-Al Mahdi won in the Visionaries category that recognises women who “have challenged the norm and became trailblazers in their chosen field”.
“I was given a standing ovation during my acceptance speech,” said Mrs Alvero-Al Mahdi. “I really didn’t expect I would win the award.
“But I believe it will motivate me to get involved in other charity work and achieve more goals. I’ve become a role model and I don’t want to let them down.”
She was also named one of the 100 Most Influential Filipinas in the World, and will accept that award in California on October 26.
She won in the innovators and thought leaders category of the award, which is given by the Filipina Women’s Network in the US.
A chemical engineer by profession, Mrs Alvero-Al Mahdi, 43, began working as a quality-control inspector at a textile factory in Dubai in 1992.
She eventually rose to chief executive at Geoscience Testing Laboratory, where she manages 450 engineers, technicians, microbiologists and consultants from the Middle East and Asia.
Her husband, Mohammed Al Mahdi, 47, accompanied her to the gala awards ceremony in Dubai.
“She deserves more than what she has achieved after going through so many challenges in her life in the past 20 years,” said Mr Al Mahdi.
Arlene Pullido, a learning and development manager in Dubai, said on Wednesday: “Their two children, Noor and Humaid, were with me when she received the award last night.
“I couldn’t be prouder of my friend and the work she’s been doing.”
Ms Pullido first met Mrs Alvero-Al Mahdi in 2004. Both were volunteers with the non-profit Filipino Computer Club, which offers free computer training.
“I look up to her as a leader with good values and sound decision-making skills,” she said.
“As one of her best friends, she has never made me feel that she’s achieved so much in terms of wealth and status, and being a recipient of so many local and international awards.”
In 2008, Mrs Alvero-Al Mahdi was runner-up in the professional category at the Emirates Businesswoman awards.
A year later, she was honoured as one of the Women of Substance by Illustrado magazine in Dubai.
The same year she won the Bagong Bayani (New Heroes) Award for most outstanding employee and the Blas F Ople Award for Natatanging Bagong Bayani, the highest and most-coveted recognition given to exemplary overseas Filipinos.
In December last year she received the Presidential Pamana ng Pilipino Award from Benigno Aquino, the Philippine president.
The non-profit Filipino Digerati Association, which she co-founded, won the Presidential Banaag Award.
The other categories in Emirates Woman of the Year Award are Artists, Humanitarians and Achievers.
The four other nominees for Mrs Alvero-Al Mahdi’s category were: Yael Mejia, founder and chief executive of Foodcraft Solutions; Kate Goodwin, founder and chief executive of Illumin8 Media Make-up Studio; Tala Samman, founder of myfashiondiary.com; and Buthaina Al Mazrui and Alamira Hashim, founders and hosts of The Dinner Club by No 57.
rruiz@thenational.ae
Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
The specs
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The specs
Engine: 3.0-litre six-cylinder turbo
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THE BIO
Born: Mukalla, Yemen, 1979
Education: UAE University, Al Ain
Family: Married with two daughters: Asayel, 7, and Sara, 6
Favourite piece of music: Horse Dance by Naseer Shamma
Favourite book: Science and geology
Favourite place to travel to: Washington DC
Best advice you’ve ever been given: If you have a dream, you have to believe it, then you will see it.
The more serious side of specialty coffee
While the taste of beans and freshness of roast is paramount to the specialty coffee scene, so is sustainability and workers’ rights.
The bulk of genuine specialty coffee companies aim to improve on these elements in every stage of production via direct relationships with farmers. For instance, Mokha 1450 on Al Wasl Road strives to work predominantly with women-owned and -operated coffee organisations, including female farmers in the Sabree mountains of Yemen.
Because, as the boutique’s owner, Garfield Kerr, points out: “women represent over 90 per cent of the coffee value chain, but are woefully underrepresented in less than 10 per cent of ownership and management throughout the global coffee industry.”
One of the UAE’s largest suppliers of green (meaning not-yet-roasted) beans, Raw Coffee, is a founding member of the Partnership of Gender Equity, which aims to empower female coffee farmers and harvesters.
Also, globally, many companies have found the perfect way to recycle old coffee grounds: they create the perfect fertile soil in which to grow mushrooms.
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