ACTIS SPOTLIGHT ON TANIA JARJUR: GENERAL COUNSEL OF YELLOW DOOR ENERGY

Yellow Door Energy’s General Counsel Tania Jarjur was interviewed by Actis, our majority shareholder, as part of their spotlight series on exceptional leaders.

The full interview is published here.

Can you tell us about your role at Yellow Door Energy?

As General Counsel, no two days are ever the same. I’m responsible for a wide variety of areas, which makes the job very interesting. This includes working on projects, where I negotiate customer and vendor contracts, on acquisitions, entering new markets, project finance, resolving disputes and litigation, reporting to shareholders. I also need to ensure the company complies with all the relevant regulations, such as anti-bribery and anti-money laundering, whistleblowing, and deep-dive ‘know your customer’ due diligence work to ensure that the counterparties we work with don’t violate our policies. I’m also on hand to help various team members with their work.

How did you come to join Yellow Door Energy?

I met the team at Yellow Door Energy while I was in private practice, and the company later became my first client when I established my own legal consulting firm. The team and its vision really stood out because they were trying to figure out how to make the distributed energy generation business model work. Two years later, our paths crossed again and I started out at Yellow Door Energy as legal counsel when the company was raising seed finance. The company has given me the opportunity to grow personally and professionally while also pursuing a role with purpose because of its focus on sustainable energy.

What has your experience been like at Yellow Door Energy? And what kinds of initiative does the company have to promote an inclusive culture?

I’ve had a very different experience at Yellow Door Energy. I still have to work hard, but here it’s not because of my gender and I feel as though my work is valued. When I joined, there was a female head of risk, and she really inspired me. She was highly competent, had strong ethics and had a real confidence in the work she did. She was also herself at work – she didn’t feel she needed to adopt a male perspective or persona – and that was a real breath of fresh air. She allowed me to have the confidence to just be me and that means I can devote my energy to my work rather than trying to be something I am not.

There is still some way to go, but at Yellow Door Energy, we are trying to address gender imbalance in the region and industry. Here in the Middle East, just 20% of the energy industry’s employees are female; at Yellow Door Energy, that figure is 35% so far. Our entire legal department is female – that’s not intentional, by the way, as we don’t hire based on gender – and we are trying to recruit more female engineers. Actis has supported us in putting in place some initiatives. We now have an I&D committee and we’ve recently conducted an employee survey that will help inform how we further promote inclusion in the company. We also offer flexible working arrangements, and we better maternity leave and support than other companies in the region. I firmly believe that, given time, we will get there.