Youmna Younes joined Berytech in September 2019 and is currently a Senior Business Advisor in the Food System Challenge program funded by BMZ and implemented in partnership with WFP.
Prior to joining Berytech, Youmna was a Senior Relationship Manager with 10+ years in the Commercial lending department at one of the alpha banks in Lebanon. As a Relationship Manager closely working with SMEs, she gained the following skills and expertise:
- Business Development, Commercial Lending, and Risk Analysis.
- Customer-centric, building strong relations to provide financial, operational in-depth analysis and solutions.
- Strong negotiation skills and ability to close transactions with a flexible solution-driven attitude.
- Passion in supporting the development of the SME sector in Lebanon, leading to sustainable economic growth and social development.
Youmna dealt with a wide spectrum of Lebanese businesses in different industries and sectors, as follows; Tourism and Hospitality, F&B, Manufacturing, Agriculture, Agri-food industry, Construction, Renewable Energy, Trading, Services, etc.
In her banking career, she worked on several types of lending (facilities, long-term loans, LC/LG) and with several local and international institutions such as the BDL, Kafalat, EIB, and IFC.
Thus, she was able to identify the success and failure points of different businesses and acted as a business advisor for her clientele’s portfolio.
Since joining Berytech, Youmna spent almost 3 years as Business Advisor in the USAID LED project where she was engaging with the private sector and onboarding new SMEs to the program after criteria fit assessment and initial needs assessment. Her role was to understand the requirements of SMEs and the source of business problems and suggest solutions accordingly. She performed a thorough diagnosis of the SMEs to grasp the challenges and recommend solutions as well as technical assistance allowing the companies to grow their sales and create sustainable jobs. All while assisting in the management and monitoring of consultants’ activities and collecting data and delivering to the MEL team as required by the USAID standards and procedures.
Following her role in the LED project, Youmna moved to the WEEL program funded by the EU/Expertise France in 2022 where she was a Business Advisor working closely with women-led businesses to support and develop their activities through in-kind grants and technical support up to 40,000€. And in 2023, Youmna joined the Food System Challenge (FSC) program as a Senior Business Advisor, in which her role is to provide the selected agri-food SMEs with a transformational journey including business services, technical assistance, cash and in-kind grants, with a total value of up to 100,000$, to achieve long term growth.
Youmna is a BA graduate in Business Administration, majoring in Finance, and is currently working on her thesis for her Master’s in Entrepreneurship and Project Management from CNAM Paris. She also acquired several certifications in Finance and Business development from ESA Beirut to complement her learning journey.