Tamara Abdel-Jaber

Partner at Amam Ventures

Speaker

As a business starter, an ecosystem builder, and an impact-driven believer in the power of SMEs and startups, Tamara Abdel-Jaber is a partner at Amam Ventures, a Gender Lens investment fund and accelerator that caters to businesses that are committed to equality, those that put women at the front and focus on specifically serving women in the MENA region. As the founder of Palma Consulting, she is an expert in governance, strategy design and execution, business and digital transformation.

In her belief in the importance of women networking and support groups, Tamara co-founded the Women in Business Arabia virtual community which grew organically to 45K+ members of business owners and professional women across the Arab region. She mentors and advises several startups and women-led businesses. She is also a part of the VV100, a select group of 100 of the most engaged and visionary members of the Vital Voices Global Leadership Network.

Tamara is a Certified Board Director. She recently served on the board of the Business and Professional Women Association in Jordan. She currently serves as a board member at the Int’l Council of Management Consulting Institutes (ICMCI) as well as Learning Chair at EO Jordan (Entrepreneurs’ Organization). She is a board member and audit committee member at MEPS (Middle East Payment Services), a leading payments company in Jordan, Iraq, Yemen and Palestine. She also serves as an advisory board member for several SMEs and scale-ups in Jordan. She has designed advisory programs to support startups and SMEs in their journey towards growth and scaling up.

Until May 2022, Tamara was the Chief of Party for USAID ERRS (Economic Recovery and Reform Support) Program through which she led on several technical assistance activities to the Government of Jordan that included developing feasibility plans for several public private partnership projects, designing methodologies for public investment management, and designing an omnibus law addressing investment and doing business in Jordan. She also took part in the design of Jordan’s Economic Modernization Vision under the auspices of the Royal Hashemite Court.

Tamara was selected to take part in the 2009 Fortune/ U.S. State Department Global Women Leaders Mentoring Partnership where she was mentored by c-level executives at Accenture in New York and Chicago. Tamara was also selected to participate in the Presidential Entrepreneurship Summit in Washington D.C., USA.

In recognition to Tamara’s contribution to spark business innovation and entrepreneurship in the MENA region, she has been ranked at number 39 of 100 Most Powerful Arab Women for 2011. For three years in a row (2011-2013), Arabian Business recognized Tamara on its list of Power 500 (Most Influential Arabs). Tamara was also recognized by Forbes Middle East as one of the 200 Most Powerful Arab Women for 2014.

Tamara participated in many national and international conferences, as a lecturer and key-note speaker on the topics of strategy, business and digital transformation, as well as access to finance, entrepreneurship and women leadership and empowerment.

Born in 1976, Tamara Abdel-Jaber graduated from the University of Jordan in Amman, where she received her bachelor’s degree in accounting and Finance with honors. And she became a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) in 1997 from Delaware - USA. She founded Palma Consulting in 2002, cofounded Women in Business Arabia in 2017 and Amam Ventures in 2019.