Meet the Kuwait-born woman breaking the glass ceiling in the banking world

Meet the Kuwait-born woman breaking the glass ceiling in the banking world

Rania Llewellyn broke the glass ceiling as the first woman to lead one of Canada's eight largest banks. Her challenge at Laurentian Bank of Canada is to revive a lender that has struggled for years to find growth.

Llewellyn, who was named Laurentian's chief executive officer Tuesday, comes with an unusual biography for a Canadian bank chief. Born in Kuwait, she moved to Canada as a teenager from Egypt, where her father is from, and earned a master's degree in business administration from St Mary's University, a small public college in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

While Emirati serial entrepreneur Sara Al Madani said that attitudes are changing, finance in particular remains a 'man's world'

She joined Bank of Nova Scotia as a part-time teller and began a 26-year climb that included a stint as