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July's Remarkable Women: Zahra Al Hilaly

Listen to Zahra's story on the go | Spotify | Bio

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Meet our host: Lynne Foley, OAM

“I channel my energy into influencing and supporting each woman I meet to be empowered to reach her aspirations. I intend my legacy to be the contribution I make to achieving gender equality, through opening doors to education for women and girls.”

An exciting motivational speaker, Lynne Foley, OAM, is passionate about leaving her audience with new ideas, thoughts and challenges and full of confidence to break through personal and professional barriers. She works professionally by facilitating leadership programs for individuals and organizations whose mission is to empower women and men through personal and leadership development. Lynne is an accredited and highly respected executive coach, speaker, consultant and educator, gaining her experience through successful executive leadership, consulting, board chair and director roles. As chair of the Zonta Spirit Working Group, Lynne implements the organization’s global strategy to meet the leadership needs of members, clubs and districts  facilitates at conferences and workshops.

Meet Zahra Al Hilaly

Zahra Al Hilaly is an Australian lawyer, journalist and activist for human rights, interfaith dialogue and peacebuilding. She currently works as a programme manager for the Young Negotiators Academy, where they train young people to lead negotiations at the United Nations’ Conference of Parties. As a proud daughter of refugees from Palestine and Iraq, Zahra’s mission is to ensure refugee youth are being amplified in peacebuilding agendas. As the former CEO of Oaktree Australia, Zahra led Australia’s largest youth-led development organization, empowering more than 750,000 young people in the Asia-Pacific region to become leaders of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

In 2023, Zahra was named an Australian Women in Excellence and in 2024, she was named on the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia-Pacific list.