14 Women Entrepreneurs Join Sheraa's 2nd SWIF Fellowship

By: Women Entrepreneurs Review Team | Monday, 12 October 2026

The Sharjah Entrepreneurship Center (Sheraa) has selected 14 women entrepreneurs for the second cycle of the Sharjah Women Impact Fellowship (SWIF), for its six-month-long programme designed to help established firms take the next step of development.

The selected women entrepreneurs have exhibited business traction and are keen on scaling up their business along with improving their leadership skills. The participants comprise of nine SMEs and five startups from different sectors, including F&B, FMCG, creativity, sustainability, manufacturing, EdTech, and healthcare. SWIF provides the fellows with an opportunity to discuss issues related to their businesses sustainability and growth, offering solutions to existing challenges.

Key Highlights:

• SWIF brings together 14 women founders from diverse industries to accelerate business growth
• Sheraa’s six-month fellowship combines leadership coaching, mentorship, and practical learning
• Women entrepreneurs gain strategic networks and expert guidance to scale established ventures

In line with Sheraa’s LEAD framework, a structured approach for equipping entrepreneurs with the skills and experience needed to build resilient businesses, SWIF consists of mentoring, coaching, hands-on training and networking.

One of the key activities of the programme is the leadership training workshop conducted by Noona Nafousi, the CEO of NEO Noor, at Chedi Al Bait in Sharjah, and special master classes that will teach them ways to present and pitch effectively. They will apply their learning’s from the above-mentioned activities to address their existing problems and prepare for exploring new business avenues.

SWIF began with an orientation event with a role-played leadership assessment carried out by Evolve Careers. The exercise served as a benchmarking tool for the evaluation of leadership development and problem key areas. The participants shared their entrepreneurial stories and discussed current challenges in leadership development and expansion of their businesses.

The cohort consists of a diverse range of businesses that are currently working in consumer, creative industry, sustainability, education, technology and health care sectors. Some of the entrepreneurs who attended the event were Eva Davidova – founder of Tamre, Kim Thompson – founder of Raw Coffee Company, Tanaz Shahriari - founder of Miva Flavour House, and Aysha Alyahyaee - founder of Akiro Cafe & Bakery.

Founders in diverse ventures include those who are starting up their businesses in the fields of sustainability, education, technology, beauty, and healthcare. They all showcase the diversity of industries that are part of the entrepreneurship ecosystem offered by Sheraa. The inclusion of all these founders highlights the different types of business models adopted by female entrepreneurs when creating their ventures.

Sara Abdelaziz Al Nuaimi, CEO of Sheraa, stressed the significance of developing leadership skills along with the business. She stressed on the fact that setting up a business is just the start of an entrepreneur’s story, while its development and further expansion requires ongoing enhancements.

Fatma Almulla, founder of FMM; Maryam Al Shehhi, co-founder of Al Aswad; and Medina Beganovic, founder of Wonder. Christine Wilson, founder of Peahead.eco, contributes to the lot with her multi-industry business, combining sustainability, creative industries, and manufacturing.