A Chat with Mouna Aouri: Social entrepreneur; Impact investor; Engineer; Founder and CEO Woomentum

This week, Stephen Ibaraki has an exclusive interview with Mouna Aouri.

Mouna Aouri is an accomplished social entrepreneur, impact investor, and engineer with over two decades of experience in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Japan. She founded and leads Woomentum, a Singapore-based platform dedicated to empowering women entrepreneurs in the Asia-Pacific region by promoting access to growth capital.

Under her leadership, Woomentum has enabled over 5,000 female entrepreneurs in APAC to gain new business skills through customized programs, access mentoring and access funding. Mouna has established strategic partnerships with corporate entities, institutional investors, and government agencies to effectively scale and measure impact goals of all stakeholders involved. She championed the vision of expanding Woomentum's impact through research and localization of content, resulting in the translation of all publications into 6 Asian languages for effective local dissemination and deeper impact. (The publications can be downloaded here: https://blog.woomentum.com/publications/)

Mouna is also a Senior Advisor at Beacon Fund, a gender lens investment fund that provides debt financing to SMEs in Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines. She is a Director of the Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (MPEVCA) and Chate Sat in Myanmar.

With a background in engineering, Mouna has worked with various engineering firms and development finance institutions. She has managed multiple projects and facilitated negotiations between the Tunisian government and the Japanese International Cooperation Agency, which resulted in the financing of a desalination plant. In Japan, she worked as a North-East Asia Regional Manager at Sixsense Engineering, where she provided specialized engineering services.

Mouna holds an MSc in Urban Engineering from Tsukuba/Ibaraki University, Japan. She speaks fluent Arabic, French, English, and business level Japanese. Her strengths include leadership in driving new initiatives, problem-solving, and empathy in leading teams.

As a purpose-driven leader in social impact, Mouna's vision is to foster collaboration and partnerships among diverse stakeholders to invest in the companies of the future and tackle the most pressing issues that face our global community. She is also an endurance athlete and a proud mother of two daughters, and strives to bring the same level of dedication and discipline to her work as she does to her personal life.

Linkedin profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mounaa/