IZUN - Jewish and Arab Influential Directors

Jasmine is committed to tackling the lack of representation of women in decision-making positions by promoting equal participation in management and leadership of Israel’s public arena and economy. Jasmine aims to challenge existing structures and address some of the major gaps between the representation of women and men in executive and decision-making positions through the project IZUN – Promoting Jewish and Arab Women Leadership in the Economy. The program operates thanks to the donations from The Hadassah Foundation, The JWF of Greater Palm Beaches, The New Israel Fund (NIF) and Leumi Bank.

IZUN trains diverse women, successful business owners, academics with experience in management, to serve as board members in corporate, public and NGO boards. IZUN will create the first generation of women’s economic leadership in Israel, promote and empower other women directly and indirectly and reduce the inequality between men and women in the business sector. IZUN cherry picks participants and provides them with in-depth practical tools, support and training of the business world, finance and law, and ethics and responsibility necessary for board members and high-ranking corporate officers.  IZUN also emphasizes the importance of women in power advocating for other women, and the “pay-it-forward” approach.

 The program includes serval main stages:

Academic Training- each year, at least 25 Jewish and Arab women will participate in a theoretical course, conducted by one of

  • the leading academic institutions in Israel – The “Open University”. The course will provide the women with the theoretical knowledge that is necessary for anyone who wishes to fill a senior position in a company. This stage will include 54 academic hours of lectures.
  • Implementing Forum-In addition to the theoretical studies, the participants will attend group and personal meetings of empowerment, enrichment simulations and business networking sessions. Also, this stage will include a practical part of study visits to companies and mainly participation in actual board meetings and other management meetings, as well as in business conferences.
  • One-on-one Mentoring by Actual directors-each woman will meet individually with an experienced director (voluntarily) to mentor, assist and guide her on real time in the integration process as a director or in any other senior position.

Graduate Forum  Every year, Jasmine will hold at least 3 alumni meetings sessions for all the program’s participants and graduates in order to give them additional enrichment by various lectures and empowerment sessions, enable shared learning and open dialog, exchange advice and information, business networking, to raise to the public awareness on the issue of  inclusion of women on boards and to create a strong and motivated economy.

The program’s goals are:

(1) To train businesswomen as directors, while providing knowledge, management and practical tools that are necessary to the functioning of the director and key personnel in high management positions, including legal aspects, financial, ethical, networking and liability of directors in each cycle of the program.

(2) To create the first generation of female economic leadership in the Israeli economy.

(3) To promote and empower Jewish and Arab women.

(4) To tackle inequality between the Jewish and Arab sectors.

(5) To tackle inequality between men and women generally and in the business sector specifically.

(6) To foster co-existence between different sectors in Israel

(7) To lead social change in the policies of the private sector and government companies, in order to increase their willingness to integrate women on their boards of directors and/or in other high key positions.

(8) To distribute and publish the program’s vision and outcomes as much as possible among women in Israel, so that the program can be an inspiration and gain a different perspective for women from all over Israel in terms of the options that are open to women in the Israeli society.