Deema Ghata-Aura
Executive Coach for Professional Midlife Women
Founder of Criterion Coaching
Named LinkedIn’s Top Executive Coaching Voice 2024
Award-winning executive coach and leadership trainer, Deema Ghata-Aura has helped leaders and executives around the world unlock their full potential. As the founder of Criterion Coaching, she has worked across the United States, Europe and the Middle East, coaching senior personnel at major organisations, including Bain & Company, Walmart, Google, Mastercard, GlaxoSmithKline, Walkers Law, the UAE Space Agency, as well as hundreds of entrepreneurs.
Now based in the UAE, Deema specialises in supporting professional women over the age of 40 to increase their confidence, enhance their leadership skills, and find renewed fulfilment. Many women notice their confidence suffers in midlife – Deema’s mission is to help them move from outwardly successful but secretly isolated and unsure to purposeful and impactful with a clear sense of their goals, and the confidence to achieve them.
“You know that feeling of being constantly overwhelmed, exhausted by overthinking, and afraid to make the big decisions?” Deema says. Despite all their experience and hard work, professional women often face a crisis of confidence that undermines their identity and holds them back personally and professionally.”
Through the unique Energy Leadership™️ coaching and training programme, Deema helps women break free from this cycle to gain clarity, stop overthinking and make confident decisions aligned with their values.
The transformation doesn’t just benefit the women themselves – it creates ripple effects throughout organisations and society, keeping more highly skilled women in corporate jobs and addressing systemic issues, such as workplace stress and burnout, which cost UAE companies $50.84m USD per hour (Gallup State of the Global Workplace 2024 Report).
Deema began her career in the corporate world, leading teams and overseeing a £6 billion lending target at the UK’s largest retail bank. She later moved into coaching other executives, gaining a Master’s in Education, plus certifications from the ICF (International Coaching Federation) and iPEC (Institute of Professional Excellence in Coaching).
It was when Deema faced her own confidence challenges in her 40s – despite running a highly successful international coaching business – that she knew she wanted to concentrate on helping other professional women navigate this transition and embrace life fully.
With North Indian roots and from Yorkshire, in the North of England, Deema returned to the UAE after a four-year stint in Texas. She lives in Dubai with her husband and their two teenage children.
