Mona Shibel is a Business Mentor & Coach to women entrepreneurs. Herself an entrepreneur, she helps other entrepreneurs create and build a thriving business around their expertise.
Mona has 18 years cumulative experience in banking, financial consulting and mentoring for corporations, SMEs and entrepreneurs.
Mona started her career in 1995 with Bank Audi, which is one of the leading banks in the region. She worked for 9 years in corporate and SME credit. As Senior Relationship Manager in one of the bank’s largest regional branches, with a credit portfolio at the time of $300 million, she gained significant experience in corporate, commercial and SME credit lending. During her career with Audi, she contributed to a number of projects including the establishment of Credit policies and procedures, due diligence processes for one of the bank’s merger transactions, and the formation of an employee evaluation and remuneration program.
Mona joined 6 Sigma Financial Consultancy, a DIFC registered company, in 2005 as Financial Consultant in the Corporate Finance, Consultancy and Training arms of the business.
Under the Corporate Finance umbrella, Mona applied financial modeling, business valuation using different methodologies, due diligence and project management on behalf of both buyers and sellers. She worked on a range of private placement transactions for companies in numerous fields including manufacturing, fashion retail, media, IT, banking, construction, real estate and healthcare. The list of projects included:
- Private Placement deal for a construction project in Norway
- Debt structuring for a manufacturing company in Dubai
- Investment Due Diligence for a merger within the media sector in Egypt
- Investment Due Diligence on behalf of an investment company in Abu Dhabi
- Private Placement deal for a manufacturing company in Dubai
- Private Placement deal of a high-end fashion house in Dubai
- Private Placement deal for a material testing/geotechnical engineering company in Qatar
For corporate clients, Mona executed numerous cash flow consultancies and provided support to clients in improving efficiency and increasing operating cash flows.
In terms of bank consulting, Mona’s developed expertise in credit rating, specifically in the understanding of business modeling and what drives success. Her expertise covered real estate, construction, fashion, tourism, and retail portfolios.
Mona also built expertise in the understanding and analysis of Financial Institutions based in the GCC, Europe, US, Africa and Asia as well as market sizing and wallet sharing on behalf of banks in Doha and KSA.
She later played an instrumental role in the development of 6 Sigma’s Credit & Risk Rating System with hands-on experience in risk rating modeling, methodology, implementation and follow-up within the framework of Basel II.
Finally, Mona has executed numerous trainings and mentoring for bank employees under “6 Sigma Training & Development”, where she applied her experience to train entry to mid-level bank employees in various topics including Basic Accounting, Advanced Accounting, Financial Analysis, Credit Analysis, Credit & Relationship Management, and Risk Management.
While working with 6 Sigma, and given her interest and curiosity with the online world, Mona started her entrepreneurial journey in 2007 by setting up an online business venture. Realizing the potential of business, whereby she was able to generate immense traffic for the website, she left the corporate world in December 2010 to focus on her business. Within a short period of time, she built a good name in the market and within 2.5 years, she had a full team of people working for her.
Through this journey of learning how to run a business and overcoming her own challenges to achieve success, and given the increasing number of women entrepreneurs in the Middle East wanting to start their own businesses, Mona decided to leverage her own experience in running a business as well as her consulting and mentoring experience to help other women start and build a thriving business around their expertise.
Her mentoring covers the essential ingredients required to make a business successful and she focuses on helping entrepreneurs working more efficiently and strategically while focusing on income generation, especially in the early stages, to ensure sustainability.
Mona holds an MBA with a concentration in Finance from the American University of Beirut and a BBA from the American University of Beirut.