KUALA LUMPUR: Amanie Advisors chief executive officer Maya Marissa Malek has bagged the ‘Women Leader in the Middle East 2023’ award at an event held in conjunction with the Second Annual Middle East Women Leaders Summit 2023 which took place from Oct 24-25 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Amanie Advisors’ global office is located in the Dubai International Financial Centre and specialises in providing quality Shariah advisory services to a wide range of clientele, including financial institutions, corporations and governments.
The award came as a surprise for Maya Marissa, despite already being a multiple award-winning Islamic finance expert and executive leader.
She is also recognised as one of the ‘Top-50 Most Influential Women in Middle East Finance’ by Financial News UK of Dow Jones Group with extensive experience driving strategic planning and collaboration with key industry players – including regulators, corporates, banks and standard-setting bodies.
“I think it was quite surprising because doing Islamic Finance in the Middle East is a male-dominated field, unlike Malaysia, so I feel very humbled that they have this recognition, as I didn’t expect it,” she told Bernama via a phone call yesterday.
On challenges, Maya Marissa said after moving to Dubai in 2014 with her family, she had to break a lot of barriers to establish herself as the head of the shariah advisory firm outside Malaysia, particularly in the Middle East.
“There were a lot of challenges… as long as I can prove that I know what I’m talking about, the recognition comes in. People start to take you seriously and they want to work with you. They value your opinion, your thoughts, it was a process first to establish myself, prove myself and then the doors were open.
“We have to be one step ahead in the industry, trying to provide cutting-edge shariah solutions and to have a problem-solving mindset,” she said, adding that her aim is to make Islamic Finance mainstream amid a lot of financial instability globally.
“There’s a lot of instability in the world and now is the time to really look at Islamic finance as part of mainstream finance because Islamic finance works based on real economy activities, (which is) totally different from conventional finance, so this might be the time the whole world needs to really consider that this is a more sustainable way of doing things,” she said.
Maya Marissa said it takes a lot of effort to create awareness and relearn to be where she is currently.
“I go to the ground… I talk to the market players, to the movers and shakers of the industry convincing them of the merits of Islamic Finance so that’s my aim, to go well beyond most Muslim countries,” she said. — BERNAMA
