7 powerful Arab women in the digital world

Sara Yasin is a Palestinian-American journalist leading the News Curation team for BuzzFeed News in New York.

She has previously worked at GlobalPost and Mic. 

Yasin has a passion for monitoring how people consume news, and the impact false stories about Muslims has had on people's behavior and attitude. 

Yasin will be taking the stage at Step Conference in Dubai this April.

As an international affairs correspondent at the BBC in Washington DC, Lebanese Kim Ghattas extensively covered the 2016 presidential campaign in the United States. 

Before moving to DC, Ghattas covered the Middle East for a decade for international publications including the BBC and the Financial Times from her base in Beirut. 

In 2006, she was part of an Emmy-Award-winning BBC team covering the Lebanon-Israel conflict.

Ghattas also writes a regular column for Foreign Policy magazine. Her work has also been published by the Daily Beast, TIME magazine, and the Washington Post. 

Ghattas will be speaking at Step Conference in Dubai this April.

Jordanian-Palestinian feminist Laila Hzaineh has been challenging societal norms in the Arab world using the power of social media -specifically video. 

As a video blogger, the 19-year-old courageously tackles issues women in the region often find hard to face including sexism, harassment and the unspoken truth about domestic violence. 

Hzaineh has spoken out against virginity tests, sexual harassment and domestic violence in the Arab world through a number of videos on Facebook. 

Her most popular one to date is a response to one man's post in which he suggested that women bring sexual harassment onto themselves through the clothes they wear. 

Hzaineh shot back in a video that ultimately went viral - garnering nearly 100,000 views on the social platform. 

Dima Khatib started out in traditional journalism, but has ventured out into the digital sphere since. 

Khatib is currently the Managing Director of AJ+, a multi-lingual digital channel classified among the top digital publishers in the world. 

Khatib is the only executive female in the Al Jazeera network and her twitter account has been named as one of the most powerful Arab accounts on the platform since 2011. 

She is also the most influential Palestinian female on Twitter. 

Prior to her digital work, Khatib was a broadcast journalist with Al Jazeera in the organization's Doha newsroom in 1997 where she reported from over 30 countries. 

She set up bureaus in China and Venezuela, becoming the first female bureau chief of Al Jazeera in Latin America. 

Khatib will be taking the stage at Step Conference in Dubai this April. 

Palestinian-American Dena Takruri is a journalist, on-air presenter and producer at AJ+ based in San Francisco, California. 

Takruri began her broadcast career in 2007 as co-host and producer on a satellite television program called "What's Happening" that aired on Arab Radio and Television Network (ART). 

Between 2007 and 2008, Takruri worked as a research assistant with Dr. Rochelle Davis of Georgetown University - where she got the opportunity to interview U.S. military personnel who served in Iraq, for a project on their perceptions of Iraqi culture and U.S. military cultural training. 

The research findings were later published in a chapter of a book titled "Anthropology and Global Counter Insurgency."

Sara Hamdan is currently editor of Think with Google MENA, a blog at Google that's all about embracing the digital sphere. 

She also has a travel and style blog called Holidays in Heels. 

Prior to this, Hamdan was the main writer for The International New York Times in Dubai, covering business and culture for six years.

Hamdan will be taking the stage at Step Conference in Dubai this April.

Jordanian Palestinian Amani Al-Khatahtbeh is all about the empowerment of women, especially in today's Islamophobic world. 

She is the founder and editor-in-chief of Muslim Girl, a website targeting Muslim women in the United States with a tagline that is all about speaking up. 

“Muslim Women Talk Back," is the website's motto. 

Al-Khatahtbeh's work has not gone unnoticed. She was named in Forbes' 30 under 30 list in 2016 under the media category. 

Her face has also been featured on several billboards in Times Square for her incredible and empowering work. 

That's not all. Al Khatahtbeh regularly appears on CNN, BBC and Al Jazeera, where she comments on political, social and women's issues. 

"I'm on a mission to make history by empowering Muslim women's media representation through developing the first mainstream media network by and for Muslim women," she said, according to Forbes.