Layla Al-Farsi

Omani educator pioneering gender equality in STEM fields across the Gulf Cooperation Council since 2020.

Layla Al-Farsi is a transformative education leader from Oman who has significantly advanced women's participation in STEM since 2020. As founder of the STEM4Girls Initiative, she established 45 coding academies in GCC countries, training over 10,000 female students annually. Her Girls in Robotics program won the UN Women Innovation Prize in 2022, enabling expansion to Yemen and Bahrain.

Al-Farsi co-designed the Arabic STEM Curriculum Framework, adopted by 12 Middle Eastern universities by 2024. This bilingual program integrates Islamic scientific heritage with modern topics like quantum computing and renewable energy, increasing female enrollment in engineering programs by 43% in participating institutions.

In 2023, she launched the Women in Space partnership with the Oman Astronautics Center, sending two female engineers to the UAE's Hope Probe mission. Her advocacy led to Oman's 2024 mandate requiring 30% female representation in all STEM university departments.

Layla's work is chronicled in the documentary Breaking Barriers: Layla's Lab (2025) and the Oxford University case study Gender Equity in Gulf STEM Education. She advises the UNESCO Arab States Office on digital education policies and recently secured $25 million from the Abdul Latif Jameel Foundation to build GCC's first all-female AI research center.