Women of Empowerment
Christiane Amanpour
CNN Chief International Correspondent
Power Factors: She is one of the most
honored television journalists in the
States. She’s balanced the hawk mentality
of CNN’s other Middle East expert
Wolf Blitzer with a warmly accurate portrayal
of events and lifestyles surrounding
the region. As that world's highest
paid correspondent, she's often welcomed
where other reporters are not.
She was named by Queen Elizabeth as a
Commander of the Order of the British
Empire (that’s only a step under knighthood).
Born to an Iranian father and a
British mother, she escaped the 1979
Iranian revolution with her family, emigrated
to Rhode Island for college and
landed a job with a local NBC affiliate.
After being rejected for endless network
positions because she lacked "the
right look," as she recalls, she landed an
assistant's job on CNN's international
desk in Atlanta. "I arrived at CNN with a
suitcase and $100."
Since then the rest of the world has fallen in love with her look.
Randa Chahal-Sabbagh
Film Director
Power Factors: She’s a pioneer and the
voice of banning censorship. When her
1998 film “Civilized" was cut by state
censors in Lebanon from 90 minutes
down to 47, she took the high road and
refused to show the film in her native
country. The Surete General, the governing
body controlling censorship, argued
that the film’s foul language could
not be shown. Instead of inciting her fan
base with emotional pleas, she set forth
a plan to help eliminate censorship. Ten
years later, the Lebanese government
awarded the director its highest honor,
the Order of the Cedar, recognizing her
Ghandi-like ways of leadership on a sensitive
subject. Now her film is slotted to
be shown in its entirety at Lebanese film
festivals throughout 2009.
The struggle to get past censorship and shallow comedies is getting easier, and Chahal-Sabbagh is lighting the way.
Maha Al-Ghunaim
Chairman and Managing Director, Global Investment House, Kuwait
Power Factors: Seizing the chance
to tap into rising international investor
curiosity in the Middle East,
Al-Ghunaim took her investment
bank public in May and hasn’t looked
back. In the wake of falling U.S. and
European markets, she raised an immense
$1 billion stockpile, and now
the Global Investment House is the
largest non-government-owned investment
bank in the Middle East,
with $9.5 billion in assets.
Insider Sub stories