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Fatema Akbari

Asia and the Pacific Islands Economic Empowerment
Global Leadership Awards

Fatema Akbari is the owner of Gulistan Sadaqat Company, a furniture manufacturing business in Kabul. Founded in 2003, the business employs close to 100 Afghans, mostly women she has trained as carpenters. A widow herself, she prioritizes hiring women whose husbands have either been killed or disabled in the war, because she is passionate about helping women gain employment and secure their lives.

Vital Voices honors Fatema with the 10,000 Women Entrepreneurial Achievement Award for her work to empower other Afghan women — through the training and employment provided by her carpentry business, and through the literacy and skills training provided by her non-governmental organization (NGO) to women in Taliban-controlled areas.

Fatema, whose family fled to Iran when the Taliban came to power, learned carpentry at a young age and envisioned returning to Afghanistan to start her own carpentry business. She knew that starting a business was a risky venture, but she also knew that success would offer a means of employment to women in her province, and would prove that women could contribute equally to the economic stability of Afghanistan as a whole. 

After building her business, Fatema enrolled in the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women program in 2009 at the American University of Afghanistan. There, she gained the management skills that would allow her to further grow the company.

Sharing a Vital Voices conviction that investing in women is one of the most effective ways to spur economic growth, Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women offered a new opportunity for Fatema. She says the program, “equipped me with new management and business developm