Laila Al Samman, Owner and Managing Partner, Al Samman & Co.
The Discipline of Leading: How Strategic Vision Drives Stability and Management in times of uncertainty and business transformation
Leadership isn’t tested in calm waters. It’s shaped in the storm, in moments when the course is no longer clear. Steering is easy when the sea is still, but the real test begins when the tides shift, visibility fades, and everyone is looking at you for direction. In those moments of uncertainty, leadership is not about having all the answers; it’s about how you move forward without them. Few understand this as profoundly as Laila Al Samman, the owner and managing partner of Al Samman & Co.
For Laila, leadership was never shaped in comfort. It was forged amid prolonged conflict, crippling economic sanctions, and the demanding realities of postwar reconstruction. Yet time and again, she chose to step forward, guiding businesses, advocating for fair policies, and contributing to Syria’s economic revival with unwavering resolve. She built her path alongside these challenges while balancing motherhood, professional ambition, and navigating a region experiencing profound change.
Early Influences in a Shifting Market
In the early 2000s, while living in Syria, Laila observed a country in transition. Fresh into motherhood and preparing to begin her professional journey, she paid close attention to the changes reshaping the economy and financial sector around her. New financial institutions were opening, the Damascus Stock Exchange was being under establishment, and the Big Four accounting firms were arriving, drawn by the new demand in the market and the requirement for international reporting in different sectors. Yet the systems to support this growth were still taking shape. Businesses were grappling with urgent, practical questions: How do we implement global accounting standards? How do we introduce governance into organisations that have never operated under such scrutiny? How do we prepare for public listing, especially with the Stock Exchange under establishment? The demand for audit, accounting, and advisory services was triggered and became urgent.
Recognising the opportunity emerging in the market, and encouraged by early discussions with professionals from international firms, Laila pursued her CPA, launching herself into public accounting at precisely the right moment. After completing her master’s degree in 2005, she began working closely with newly established banks and international stakeholders such as the IMF and IFC, contributing to the development of financial frameworks and the introduction of professional accounting practices across the sector. Her work with these international institutions gave her crucial insight into how new businesses needed to be structured in order to grow sustainably and operate with credibility maintaining compliance with global standards.
Deepening Expertise, Expanding Impact
Laila’s growing participation and hands-on experience led her to engage with Deloitte, where she continued to deepen her expertise in audit and advisory. She regularly attended international workshops and conferences, bringing global insights back to the local market and working closely with organizations to improve efficiency, strengthen governance, and apply professional standards in practice. As her responsibilities expanded, so did her role within the firm, she was appointed as ME Partner at Deloitte, taking on broader leadership responsibility and representing the firm in the market, working hard to keep serving the clients properly and managing the office despite all the challenges in the country and as such she was rewarded as best ME partner for client service for the year 2017.
Throughout her career, she has worked across several financial institutions, multinational corporations, NGOs, and public entities across the region. She spent over 14 years at Deloitte, building deep expertise in audit and tax advisory, subsequently and after Deloitte exit from Syria in 2020 due to sanctions restrictions, she pursued her career as the managing partner of Samman & Co to keep operating the office, serving the clients and secure the employees with the hard life conditions, working mainly with financial sector humanitarian and large multinational firms. In order to ensure practice continuity with the different business environment and needs, having most of her clients moved to other countries, she expanded her activities to establish Consulting & Beyond in Lebanon and Alpha Consulting in DIFC and Prime Alpha in Dubai for financial advisory services. Beyond her professional drive, she was equally committed to supporting women empowerment in business and encouraging young people to pursue their studies and professional experience through different mentoring and capacity building programs especially with the lack of access to education tools.
Steering Through Crisis with Unbreakable Resolve
During the years of conflict in Syria, Laila found herself navigating two critical responsibilities: launching her own advisory practices in Dubai while simultaneously leading and supporting operations in Syria amid the war. Backed by a highly skilled team of 45 professionals, many with over a decade of experience at Deloitte, she transformed the Syrian office into a strategic hub that supported regional operations. “I had a full team across different areas of audit and advisory which was the main support with the Dubai practice. Having the regional presence with additional income streams from the Dubai and Beirut entities, I was able to sustain operations in Syria while continuously updating the team on new standards, emerging opportunities, and the evolving ways of doing business I was exposed to in other markets,” explains Laila.
As the war deepened and much of the private sector slowed or shut down, many international organisations and NGOs increasingly shifted their efforts toward essential needs such as education, healthcare, and food security. Laila played an active role in these efforts, particularly in education-focused and capacity building initiatives, supporting training programmes and the provision of basic resources and tools. As the private sector faced escalating pressure from both conflict and international sanctions, she worked alongside international organizations to support initiatives aimed at sustaining local private businesses with the main objective to survive and ensure decent life to employees with the hard economic conditions
She participated in conferences and meetings across Europe—in France, Italy, Brussels, and Germany, where she made a consistent case: sanctions implementation should not restrict local private business operations, which remained the only source of income and essential goods for people suffering from lack of access to basic needs. “We were focusing on how to maintain private sector activities in a way, at least, to have the minimum operations and income resources with a damaged infrastructure, corruption, squeeze of liquidity, inadequate government policies, and lack of access to finance and technology, which had a direct impact on people and social wellbeing, worsened by the isolation from global communities and high unemployment,” shares Laila.
A Leadership Forged in Resilience and Empathy
Laila’s leadership approach defies a single mold, shaped instead by the ever-shifting demands of an unstable environment where war, scarcity, and economic hardship required constant adaptation. “We were not operating in a stable country. I had to travel constantly and navigate very different realities—war, shortages of basic necessities, rising living costs paired with low salaries, and limited access to education,” Laila reflects. “In moments like that, leadership cannot remain conventional. It has to rise to what the situation demands. It required strong determination and real resilience to keep going.”
During periods of uncertainty and loss, Laila became the steady voice that convinced her teams to persevere, and to believe that progress was still possible even when circumstances seemed insurmountable. Complementing this resolve is her capacity for decisive action. In moments of crisis, she had to make critical decisions, never allowing uncertainty to paralyze her determination to proceed.
Yet what ultimately defines her leadership is not strength alone, but empathy in the face of suffering. When everyone around was dealing with deeply personal challenges—loss of family members, security concerns, financial strain, and the inability to meet basic needs she kept leading her team to help overcome what they were going through. Through this combination of decisive strength and human compassion, Laila didn’t just lead an organization; she held together a community of people determined to survive and eventually thrive together where the options were very limited.
Shattering Ceilings in a Male-Dominated Arena
As one of the first female partners in the region, Laila confronted societal pushback from the outset. Fifteen to twenty years ago, even her decision to pursue a master’s degree, travel internationally, and later take on a PhD was challenged in local environment. At the time, this wasn’t considered a conventional choice for a married woman and a mother. But what made her perseverance possible was the unwavering support of her husband, a partnership without which she acknowledges she could never have succeeded. Those challenges followed her into the workplace, where she encountered resistance to women in visible roles, cultural discomfort during client meetings, and scepticism from people unaccustomed to female leaders at senior levels. But she overcame these hurdles through strategic insight, persistent relationship-building, self confidence in her capacities and strong institutional support from Deloitte’s women empowerment programs.
“Once I am asked about my experience as a working mother, I always answer that it took me lots of effort to manage, lots of guiltiness feelings skipping beautiful times with my daughters, however watching them growing up with the same motivation I always had to proceed with their career and the their exceptional achievements since early school made me realize that we truly lead by example.”
While today’s landscape offers more opportunities for women across the Middle East, she remains clear-eyed about ongoing challenges. Experience, emotional intelligence, and adaptability, she believes, remain essential tools for sustained advancement. Drawing from her hard-won experience, Laila’s advice to younger women is both practical and grounded: “Learn how to navigate resistance with prejudgement. Not every situation calls for confrontation, and experience often teaches you when to push forward and when to adapt. It’s not perfect yet, but compared to where things once stood, the path is far more open than it used to be.”
Charting a Path to Syria’s Renewed Horizon
Looking into the future and the changes in the region Laila sees Syria stepping into a promising era. With sanctions lifted, international restrictions eased, and businesses reconnecting with global partners across multiple sectors, the country is opening up to investments, innovation, and economic restructuring after years of closure. Recognizing this pivotal moment, Laila is channeling her efforts toward supporting Syria’s recovery and long-term growth. She serves as Vice President of the Damascus Chamber of Commerce and a board member of both the US-Syria Business Council and the Syrian Business Council. “Having known the market for many years and built an international network, I’m seeing a surge of investors and diaspora coming to Syria with the new evolving economic restructuring and business opportunities. In different conferences I attended lately in Arab countries, Europe and USA, different business leaders and corporations are lately inquiring about how to engage and structure business in Syria, are also seeking for multiple acquisitions and investment pipelines in a country with huge opportunities and where there is a need of everything,” Laila adds. Reconnecting with international firms, including Deloitte, allows her to redevelop her team’s expertise, deliver advisory services that meet global standards, and support both investors and government initiatives in this crucial phase of the country’s restructuring. Moreover, working with international institutions and teams such as the US-Syria Business Council is even expanding the space for different experiences and global connections, initiating bridges and networks at different individual, business and government levels that help to develop a solid local impact and international presence as an entrepreneur. Laila is also restructuring her own ventures, expanding business lines, and cultivating teams capable of taking on leadership roles across industries and advisory services. In doing so, she is aiming to help laying the foundation for a stronger, more globally connected Syria.