Morocco’s Najlae Benmbarek and Her Award-Winning Career

Rabat – Time has come once again to recognize Morocco’s memorable women such as Najlae Benmbarek, who carved their names in their professional careers. Those whose eagerness in serving their communities made them the backbone of society.

Najlae Benmbarek was born in Rabat where she studied and obtained her high school degree. Her dream was to join a film school, but to her dismay, no film school existed in Morocco at that time. Thinking about a closer option, she opted for the High Institute of Information and Communication (ISIC) in Rabat.

In this institute, there was an audio-visual branch in which she enrolled. Once she discovered journalism with her small group, she gradually forgot about cinema and decided to take up journalism as a career. She then graduated from ISIC in 2002.

Benmbarek moved to France to settle in Strasbourg. There she obtained two masters, one majoring in European Affairs from the University of Strasbourg in 2004 and the other in “major reports” journalism from the University of California, Berkeley in 2006.

Her first grounds in the field started with print media. She also worked at television network 2M as a reporter and then as a presenter for one of Morocco’s most popular television shows Grand Angle.

Thanks to her impeccable performance, she won the International Prize for Mediterranean Documentary and Reportage in Marseilles in 2009, and then two CNN African awards for Best Reporting from Africa.

In addition to her prior experiences, Benmbarek was an adviser in public diplomacy at the Moroccan embassy in London. Then she was appointed as a communication officer within The General Confederation of Enterprises in Morocco (CGEM) as well as the Social, Economic, and Environmental Council (CESE).

Since 2020, Benmbarek has been director of public diplomacy at the Moroccan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, African Cooperation and Moroccan Expatriates.

“Not because we are Moroccan, studied in public schools, or lack the necessary means that one can say we cannot reach the status we desire,” she once expressed to Connect Institute in an interview.