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Partnership helps grow entrepreneurs in JordanPartnership helps grow entrepreneurs in Jordan

A sour economy has not dampened the entrepreneurial spirit of 19 Jordanian students who spent the spring trimester at Thunderbird through a partnership with the Business Development Center in Amman.

“They now believe in themselves, and that’s what’s important,” said Maha Shawareb, vice president of the nonprofit center that opened in 2005. “They now believe the sky is the limit.”

Shawareb traveled to Thunderbird in March with the center’s founder and president, Nayef Stetieh. The pair spent a week on campus interacting with the graduate-level students from Jordan and planning additional Thunderbird programs funded through a $1.6 million grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Program director Melissa Beran Samuelson coordinates the partnership for Thunderbird at the Walker Center for Global Entrepreneurship.

Stetieh said the biggest benefit for everybody involved has been the development of cross-cultural relationships. “The first step as an entrepreneur is to build friendships across cultures and across borders,” he said. “Our partnership with Thunderbird is really breaking down borders.”

He said Thunderbird became a “second home” for the Jordanian students, and they gained a more positive view of the world. Thunderbird students and professors also got their turn to travel to Jordan.

Through Friends of Success, two Thunderbird students spent the spring in Jordan as business consultants, and six more went this summer. Another 29 winterim students spent three weeks in Jordan as business consultants.

“It was a win-win for everybody,” Stetieh said. “Jordanian companies got a fresh business perspective, and the Thunderbird students got hands-on international experience.”

Six Thunderbird professors also led an executive education program in Jordan called “Beyond Effectiveness,” which served 180 middle managers, businesswomen and small-to-medium-size enterprise owners at the Business Development Center.

The program was taught in phases by professors Steven Stralser, Mary Sully de Luque, Ernesto Poza, Christine Pearson, Sundaresan Ram and Amanda Bullough.

A group of 30 women from the program will travel to Thunderbird in October for the Jordanian Businesswomen Mentorship Program, an extension of Thunderbird’s Project Artemis for Afghan women entrepreneurs.

Shawareb said women in Jordan are educated and able to pursue high-level positions in government and business, but the workforce remains dominated by men. She said more Jordanian women need the empowerment that comes with having a career.

“It’s no longer a luxury,” Shawareb said. “It’s a must. We cannot keep 50 percent of our human resources on the sidelines.”

She said the Business Development Center’s focus on entrepreneurship has produced results despite the global financial downturn. “Jordanian exports have increased,” she said. “Local sales for our clients have increased. And unemployment rates have decreased.”

Stetieh said focusing on entrepreneurship worldwide is the key to mending the global economy.

“Entrepreneurs make the impossible possible,” he said. “An entrepreneur is someone who grabs success and grabs the vision and the ideas that make things happen.”