Mariam Almansoori began her career as an engineer in the oil and water resources sector. After marriage and children, she found herself drawn elsewhere. "I didn't know what it would be," she has said of those early years, before she began reading more about healthy food and Emirati cuisine, encouraged by her husband and children who kept praising the meals she made at home.
In 2019, she founded Montauk, a multi-concept restaurant in Abu Dhabi, with her husband, later expanding it to four more branches. In 2024, she became the first Emirati citizen to win gold at the 'Best of Gastronomy' award from France, and she also judges culinary and Arabic coffee competitions. She is raising six children alongside the business, and following her footsteps, her nine-year-old son has taught pizza-making to hundreds of other children.
"Engineering was a path," she says, "but cooking was passion and identity. The decisive moment came when I realised that true success was not about staying on a safe road, but about having the courage to carve my own."
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In July 2025, Almansoori opened Kashtat Amina in Sharjah, her first restaurant built entirely around authentic Emirati cooking, named after her mother. She says she waited for "the right time, the right place, and the right meaning" before opening it. The dishes draw on two kitchens from her childhood: her mother's, where instructions came in smell and instinct rather than minutes, and her father's, where presentation and hospitality came first.
"We learned Emirati cuisine from our homes, from our mothers and grandmothers," she says. "Today, my responsibility is not just to preserve the recipe, but to preserve its story and its identity, and to present it to the new generation in a way that honours its authenticity while speaking to their time."
She is also developing a culinary academy and hopes for Michelin recognition one day, should the guide extend to Sharjah.
"Support gave me strength, and challenges gave me experience," she says. "I went through difficult moments, but I learned that turning back was never an option; every challenge became a reason to grow stronger and more determined to prove myself."
That determination extends to the women on her team. "I believe knowledge is only complete once we pass it on," she says. "My goal is for every Emirati woman who works with me to leave more confident, more skilled, and able to build her own name and her own path."
Her advice to a woman hesitating over her first step: "Don't wait for the road to be ready for you; build it. Start even if the step is small, and learn from every experience. The Emirati woman today has everything she needs to reach the world. What she needs first is to believe in herself."
Mariam Almansoori
Abeer Al Louz
Meanwhile, Abeer Al Louz's turning point came far from any kitchen. A UAE University business graduate with an early entrepreneurship diploma from the Mohammed Bin Rashid Establishment for SMEs, she spent years in banking before realising her truest work lay elsewhere.
In 2018, she travelled with the Emirates Red Crescent to Syrian refugee camps in Jordan, running pastry workshops for children who had lost almost everything.
"Every time I saw the happiness on their faces, something became clear to me," she says. "I knew I had to start my own project. I found myself in it."
She returned and launched Tajrubah in 2019, a training platform built on a mission that went far beyond baking. "It is about giving people a few hours away from the weight of daily life," she explains.
What sets Tajrubah apart is the question Abeer asks before designing every initiative: who is being left out? That question led her to work with elderly Emirati citizens baking English scones for the first time, and to plan sessions for people in recovery with a psychologist studying baking's therapeutic effects.
It also led to one of Tajrubah's most memorable workshops, built for participants with hearing impairments. "People with hearing impairments do not lack anything," she says. "The only barrier is language." She designed a full cooking workshop for deaf participants, backed by the RTA, with a professional interpreter at its centre, despite having no sign language herself. "Honestly, I still don't," she admits. But she sat with the interpreter beforehand and learned the key kitchen terms she would need. "They taught me as much as I taught them." What unfolded was less a workshop than a conversation that needed no words. "When I saw the smiles on their faces, I understood exactly why this mattered." She is now working on a baking book and a wellbeing study.
Almansoori and Al Louz come from different worlds, an engineer turned restaurateur, a banker turned social entrepreneur, but both have built their work around the same belief: a kitchen, done right, has room for everyone. For one, that means a dish passed down through a mother's memory. For the other, a workshop that needs no shared language at all.