SEVENTEEN women executives are participating in the third Fiji Senior Women’s Leadership Programme (FSEWLP) organised by the Fiji Institute of Chartered Accountants (FICA), that launched yesterday morning at the Holiday Inn.
The program is designed for women in executive roles who want to deepen their knowledge in business operations, develop strong networks and build confidence in areas like governance and to refresh their professional brand.
Speaking to this newspaper, FICA executive director Daljeet Maharaj said the initiative is among a series of women in leadership programs they had started in 2019.
“This is part of our women in leadership series that started in 2019. In 2023, we had a discussion with the PSDI (Private Sector Development Initiative, an arm of the Asian Development Bank), where we had a Memorandum of Understanding signed last year during our International Women’s Day.
“Then our first cohort started in June last year. We had 25 participant and earlier this year we had the second in the west. This is the third one,” Mr Maharaj said.
He said out of the 17 women attending the current program, only two are members of FICA while other participating executives came from various sectors outside of accounting and finances.
“This time around we have 17 participants of which two are our members and 15 are non-members, which is a good support from the other sectors.
“We have people attending from the hospital sector, the energy sector, there is a lot of people coming from the NGO sector.”
Mr Maharaj said they look forward to the success of each of these participants in their various fields noting that they would also do frequent evaluations to ensure the effectiveness of the program.
Program facilitator Akanisi Nabalarua, a lawyer and academic by profession, said she was happy to assist in each participant’s journey to leadership.
“I’m excited for the opportunity to engage with women and assist and facilitate their journey towards their leadership goals and their action plan,””I’m also looking forward to listening to different experiences and learning lessons along the way,” Ms Nabalarua said.
The four-day training is split over two weeks – July 16-17 and July 23-24.
Note: This article was first published on the print version of the Fiji Times dated July 17, 2025
