The Middle East and North Africa’s leading system house, Pearl Polyurethane Systems, has reinforced its commitment to accelerating diversity and gender equality at the company and recently recruited two female experts in their respective fields.
Independently-owned since mid-2021, the company has rapidly introduced a range of new, industry-leading programmes including an R&D initiative – the first of its type in the region – which won first prize for insulation innovation at the Construction Innovation Awards 2021 held recently in Dubai.
The Dubai-based company is committed to improving its overall gender equality in what has traditionally been a largely male-dominated industry in the Middle East. The company points to many studies that reveal the many benefits diversity in the workplace brings to individual businesses. Statistically, businesses that increase diversity and inclusion in the workplace have 19 per cent higher innovation revenues, a 35 per cent performance advantage and are 36 per cent more profitable. Pearl has stated it wants to lead this charge in the Middle East polyurethane industry.
“It makes perfect sense to create a workforce that reflects the composition of our clients’ businesses, end-users of our products, and the wider community in general. Therefore, we are committed to building teams with the right gender balance wherever realistically possible,” commented Martin Kruczinna, managing director of Pearl Polyurethane Systems.
“In addition to our team of eight nationalities, we have also set out to narrow the gender gap by increasing the number of female team members wherever realistically possible.”
Kruczinna points to two recent appointments resulting from the diversity and gender equality drive:
Irina Kuzina – chief supply chain officer
Following over five years as regional supply chain manager for global oilfield services company, Schlumberger, Irina held a number of senior positions responsible for designing and implementing internal global asset and procurement tracking systems. With responsibility for procurement strategy development across the Middle East, Asia, Russia, South Africa and Australia, she successfully ensured inventory optimisation and on-time delivery was consistently achieved.
Kuzina holds a bachelor’s degree in science from University of Maryland in the USA, as well as an MBA from Far Eastern State University.
Kuzina’s role will be to ensure the company’s sourcing strategy is fully implemented while developing enduring relationships with new suppliers as the company expands into new verticals and geographic regions.
Nazia Shaikh – senior credit controller
With extensive professional experience working for major multinational companies such as HSBC Bank, JP Morgan, and more recently Hilti in Dubai – a multinational company that develops, manufactures, and markets products for the construction, energy and manufacturing industries – Nazia brings aa wealth of experience in credit control and financial management to Pearl. Nazia holds a Bachelor of Arts, major in economics.
“Studies have shown diverse teams are better at problem-solving, decision-making and innovating. Therefore, we are thrilled to have high-calibre recruits such as Irina and Nazia join our growing team and add expertise in their respective areas of specialisation, while helping the company to achieve its own targets. Our objective is to reinforce our corporate culture as being one of inclusiveness with a set of shared values, goals, attitudes and practices that characterise our organisation as it grows internationally from our base in Dubai.
“Our mission is to continue to recruit and develop talent through ongoing mentoring and training initiatives in order to further build on the company’s reputation for providing industry-leading technical advice and customer service. This will further entrench the entrepreneurial spirit and solutions driven ethos that Pearl has become known for. Recent appointments such as Irina and Nazia are evidence of our diversity and gender equality drive working in practice,” concluded Kruczinna.
Earlier this year, the company announced an ambitious growth plan to double the size of the Dubai-headquartered company and expand internationally over the coming five years.
Operating since 1996, the company has supplied polyurethane insulation foam systems for several trailblazing projects in the Gulf region, including Palm Jumeirah, Downtown Dubai and Ski Dubai in Mall of the Emirates.
Pearl Polyurethane offers a comprehensive range of polyurethane formulations and prepolymers for the production of high-performance polyurethane foams and elastomers.
