P&G celebrated the winners of its first-ever global CEO Challenge on July 18, 2018 during the company’s annual Signal conference in Cincinnati. Chief Executive David Taylor met with the winners, three Saudi Arabian women engineers, Linah Hussain, Malak Mously and Rawan Baik, to commend them on their achievement.
During the event, Taylor said, “This is a unique and exciting way to reach a broad group of talented people from around the world and immerse them in some real-world business case studies. We get the benefit of their thinking, and they get to experience the kind of work we do at P&G.”The CEO Challenge is P&G’s new global competition that invites individuals to demonstrate their skills in business and thinking like a CEO. P&G promoted the competition in universities and via social media, job boards, and campus events. Hussain, Mously and Baik faced stiff competition as the global contest drew 23,000 contestants from over 40 countries. All participants worked on a business case study for Head & Shoulders. The three Saudi women emerged as winners and were recognized for their outstanding insights – and potential to be successful P&G employees.
The winning all-female team were trained as industrial engineers at Jeddah’s King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the first university in Saudi Arabia to offer the degree to women. Never afraid to face a challenge, the women saw the competition as an opportunity to shatter any preconceived notions about both their home country and women engineers.
“It was a learning experience where we represented Saudi Arabia and showed the world there are women engineers in the Kingdom just like in other countries,” said Mously. “It was an indirect way to break any kind of stereotype about the Kingdom.”
In second place behind Hussain, Mously and Baik was a team from Europe and in third place was a team from North America. The finals included students from Canada, Mexico, Thailand and more.
A number of the 23,000 participants received job offers as a result of their excellent work in the competition – including one of the students from the winning Saudi team and the other two are in the process of being hired.
P&G will begin accepting applicants in Fall 2018 for the next CEO Challenge. For college students interested in learning more, please visit the P&G CEO Challenge.
