(MENAFN- Khaleej Times)
Pay attention – women aren’t breaking glass ceilings anymore. That metaphor is passé. Today they are writing new stories. They are shaping nations, steering corporations, redefining personal purpose, and literally taking every ounce of space once considered a male stronghold. Nowhere is this shift more visible than in the UAE, where women are not just included in the national narratives, but are entrusted with the task of telling it.
Reflecting the country’s faith in female leadership and competence is the presence of two women at the helm of the UAE Pavilion at Expo 2025 Osaka – Mariam Al Memari, deputy commissioner general and pavilion director, and head of UAE Expo Office, and Shaikha Al Ketbi, deputy commissioner general and creative director. Their appointment is neither a symbolic gesture nor a coincidence that came about; it is an assertion that a nation’s progressional chronicling has found new templates, designed and employed by women.
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For Al Memari, who leads the strategy, operations, and diplomatic vision of the pavilion, leadership is a lot more than holding hierarchy.“It’s about reimagining possibilities, challenging conventions,” she says, echoing a belief that women in leadership must hold both purpose and influence.
“As women leaders, I believe we bring a leadership style rooted in care, agility, and collaboration,” she says, emphasising how the active involvement of women fostered an environment where conversations flowed freely, differing viewpoints were valued, and choices were guided by clarity and empathy. This transformed the pavilion into a vibrant expression of UAE’s identity and the ideals it wished to present to the world.
Her view of empowerment is rooted in the UAE’s own trajectory – a nation that, in just over fifty years, has established itself as a bridge between heritage and modernity, tradition and global interchange. Being at the forefront of such an initiative in an administrative role, especially on a stage as significant as Expo, could not have come by deliberate design. It is a calling that she responded to with an aim to excel beyond gender biases and carry out a great responsibility the leadership of the UAE placed on her; a responsibility she fulfils with both humility and determination.
“When visitors walk into the UAE pavilion and see women confidently leading, speaking, creating, and representing the country, it signals that leadership is defined by capability, vision and integrity, and not by gender,” she says highlighting the import of her endeavour.
Beautifully aligned to Al Memari’s principled and progressive influence at the Expo is Shaikha Al Ketbi’s creative and cultural vision. An artist, architect, and cultural attaché, she brings emotional intelligence and a sense of serenity to the pavilion’s design language. She doesn’t call her work feminist or overtly symbolic. Instead, she speaks of“attunement”; of allowing spaces to breathe with memory and metaphor.
“There’s a quiet power in the way women hold space,” she says, and this gentle ethos runs like a thread through the pavilion – from the braid-like forms to the light that moves gently across thresholds. She is a leader who straddles two terrains.“To me, feminine leadership in design is about being open to intuition while staying grounded in complexity. It’s an ability to hold contradiction – to let softness and strength coexist,” she explains.
No doubt, the pavilion is remarkable for the leadership behind it, but what enhances its significance is the intention that underpins it. The theme, ‘Earth to Ether’ suggests a movement from the grounded to the aspirational. It’s a symbolic arc that mirrors the UAE’s own evolution. Designed by the Earth to Ether Collective, an Emirati-Japanese team of creatives, the pavilion features architectural elements like datecrete (an innovation using recycled date-palm waste) and timber joinery that blends Emirati areesh (traditional form of Emirati architecture) with Japanese sensibilities. Beyond the spectacle it offers, the structure reveals vignettes of UAE’s heritage through modern building forms.
As an artist, Al Ketbi’s voice is endearingly modest and quietly confident. She welcomes the appreciation that audiences have for the feminine poetics, intimacy and details they notice in her work, but in global settings like the Expo pavilion, what matters more to her is the cultural interface it kindles to tell the nation’s story. She speaks of design as an experience of“deeply felt moments” – not just as a visual aesthetic, but a lingering resonance. She also stresses that“tradition is not static; it’s alive, it evolves”. To her that meant, in this instance, pushing back against common stereotypes from outside and the familiar habits within to create what now stands as a hallmark of Emirati creative excellence on a world forum where designs compete to stand out and speak.
Her responses to aesthetic needs are less about the materials themselves and more about the feeling they evoke.“Sustainability isn’t shouted from the rooftops; it’s felt in filtered light, natural airflow, and the textures beneath your palm,” she says. In a world of ever-louder messages, the UAE pavilion in Osaka chooses to speak in hushed, deliberate tones.
This sense of cultural stewardship extends to their approach to inclusivity too. Al Memari describes the all-female leadership as a logical outcome of a system that nurtures and trusts its women.“Our presence is not just representative, it’s aspirational,” she reflects.“When young Emirati women see us here, we want them to see what’s possible when imagination is matched with opportunity.”
Their belief in the transformative power of visibility informs much of what the pavilion is trying to achieve. Along with hosting exhibits, it also hosts conversations. From Youth Ambassadors engaging in cultural exchange, to storytelling sessions, creative forums, and immersive zones dedicated to healthcare, sustainability, and space exploration, the pavilion acts as a mirror of what the UAE is and draws a sketch of what it wants to become.
Both Al Memari and Al Ketbi resist regular binaries like tradition versus innovation, feminine versus universal, structure versus symbolism. They see leadership not as a disruption of norms but as an evolution of them. While the former talks about resilience, ambition, and authenticity as guiding values, the latter reflects on the ability to hold contradiction and evenly make space for both emotion and intellect. In their collaboration, we see a model of duality in harmony: one shaping strategy, the other sculpting sensibility.
And perhaps that is the story the UAE pavilion is telling most compellingly: that cultural progress doesn’t need to erase the past, only reinterpret it; that leadership isn’t about decibels, but resonance; and that the future of national narratives might just lie in the hands of those who know how to braid light, memory, and meaning into a space people can walk through.
Amidst the neon shimmer and centuries-old shrines of Osaka, a city where futurism locks hands with deep tradition, the UAE pavilion thus rises, echoing a similar harmony of heritage and ambition. And at the heart of it, two women are holding the pen. They are not writing merely a story of women’s competence on an international arena; they are scripting what’s already here, and what’s more to come.
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