Category: The 10 Most Dynamic Business Leaders

With a desire to disrupt the traditional Real Estate Industry with innovative financial solutions and unique investment products, Yolanda Schmidtke Co-founded DLE Group AG. DLE soon identified land development as its starting investment asset class that enables property developers and housing companies to gain easier access to building land. Now spread across 5 countries and led by an experienced management team, DLE Group AG is an asset management platform serving various institutional investors and family offices with innovative and unique investment products alongside the real-estate value chain, including development financing and yielding real estate.

The Steadfast Leader

As the CEO and Co-founder, Yolanda is defining the group’s overall strategic growth path. In April 2021, Forbes magazine recognized Yolanda in “Forbes 30 under 30”. She holds a degree in Business Administration from Humboldt University, Berlin.

Yolanda was primarily bored during her studies, she was always looking for challenges and had a strong drive for innovation, which led to her launching her first business while pursuing her bachelor’s degree. Although her first venture failed, it set the fundamentals for her successful entrepreneurial journey in the real estate sector.

DLE Group AG presently manages more than 2bn EUR equity with its team of more than 90 professionals across the planet. As the leader, Yolanda Schmidtke believes that land development is one of the main asset classes that will help Germany solve its demand-supply gap for additional affordable housing.

She says, “While investments shall deliver the return to our investors, we see ourselves as solving some of the major challenges of today’s society – affordable housing for the mass and accommodation for elderly people are examples.”

The Business Lines

DLE’s platform approach enables the company to grow and to enter various new areas of the ever-growing real estate sector. The company utilizes its expertise along the entire real estate value chain to create unique synergies in asset management. Currently, DLE is expanding its partnerships with best-in-class investment managers, who hold a stake in its business and benefit from its fundraising strength.

DLE’s business lines now include

• DLE Land Development GmbH: It is Europe’s market leader in sustainable neighborhood development. It aims to create value for investors and society through innovative and responsible investing. DLE Land Development also works in tandem with various public agencies, municipal authorities, and project development companies to reduce the housing shortage in major German cities.
• DLE Capital AG: It is a specialized ESG-focused provider of senior debt and mezzanine financing for various real estate developments across Germany, Switzerland, and Austria.
• DLE Living GmbH: It is a specialized, ESG-focused investment manager for various healthcare real estate products across Europe, including nursing homes and assisted living facilities.
• DLE Logistics GmbH: Thanks to growing e-commerce demand and Germany’s leadership in Europe’s manufacturing output, DLE Logistics GmbH leverages the unique environment to build a portfolio of value-added logistics assets.
• LE Poland SP. ZO.O: Bringing the Land Development expertise from Germany to Poland, DLE’s equity-based land development strategy ensures that real estate developers have the proper access to urgently needed land to develop additional housing.

Mission and Vision

DLE is a rapidly growing sustainable Asset Management Platform in the real estate sector. Its innovative platform allows its employees to go far beyond the traditional real estate products and evolve the company’s offering along the entire real estate value chain. Its investors benefit from an increasingly broad range of investment opportunities in various asset and risk classes.

Whether DLE is developing a land, leasing real estate, or structuring financing, sustainability stays at the core of everything. Its innovative platform creates profitable and sustainable growth that amalgamates attractive returns with high social value. The organization always considers social benefit when measuring economic success at the fund, corporate, and asset levels.

Additionally, the entire team of DLE goes beyond the traditional real estate market to tap into the key mega trends in the real-estate sector, primarily by identifying innovative investment strategies and best-in-class fund managers to build joint ventures. DLE’s partnership approach is the key to attracting the right partners to join the group and helping it build its different business lines to grow the organization into a leading European asset management platform.

The organization’s mission is to identify, develop, and deliver unique investment opportunities, which helps to achieve continuous platform growth that eventually fulfills the needs of its clients and investors.

She says, “Success is, for me, relative and stands for the journey that you took rather than the absolute achievement that many compare each other to.”

Yolanda believes that DLE is poised for a successful future. Under her leadership, DLE’s vision is to generate impactful, long-term value for its stakeholders through active participation in communities’ social and economic development. Through responsible investing, she and her team seek to continue to solve several critical issues related to the impact of demographic and climate change.

Also, as the leader of the organization, Yolanda Schmidtke strives to make DLE a European asset management platform that offers investment products in different asset classes in the next 5 years.

Born and raised in a very humble, disciplined, and focused household in the UK, Farah Zafar is an award-winning Woman of the Year, Women of Influence in the Arab World, Inspiring Business Leader and Chief Legal Officer.

She has worked for the region’s most influential leaders and visionaries, has led government-to-government transactions for and on behalf of the Government of Dubai, Oman, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Emirate of Ajman and has represented investment and quasi-government entities in the GCC region.

Over the last 22 years she has helped build successful billion-dollar corporations and feels all her experience has led her to her current position as CEO of one of the most exciting tech platforms to be launched this year.

Early Life

Farah was raised in a house where academia was the primary focus. While growing up, she was not permitted to watch TV. Instead, the importance of studying and reading was instilled in her. Working hard was mandatory in her household, and failure was never an option.

Farah’s family immigrated to the UK in the 1950s, so she had witnessed her parents’ struggle and how hard they worked to build a comfortable good life. This inspired her to work hard, which will allow her to give back to her parents everything they had sacrificed. So, when her father presented her with 3 options; doctor, lawyer, and dentist, she chose to be a lawyer.

After completing her studies, Farah needed a training contract to be a registered lawyer in the UK, and after being rejected 532 times, she finally landed a training contract in a small criminal legal aid office in South London.

Sunshine after the Rain

During her training, Farah was verbally and mentally abused by her bosses; they treated her in the most horrendous way possible. The entire period of her training contract felt like torture. Every morning she used to wake up, cross the day in the calendar, throw up and go to work, where she would spend her next 18-20 hours. Despite this she later realised that her training gave her the resiliance to always work hard and strive for the best.

Soon after completing her training, she got her dream job in a law firm in Mayfair. Many years later, Farah received a call informing her that she had been selected for the Sole Legal Counsel’s position for the Engineer’s Office of HH Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum in Dubai. Recognizing the life-changing opportunity, Farah willingly relocated to Dubai and embraced the challenge presented in front of her.

From there onwards, she started holding various prominent positions including Sole Counsel to the the Engineer’s Office, the founding team of Omniyat, Head of Capital Transactions for Dubai Holding and Chief Legal Officer for the Public Investment Fund of Saudi for Amaala.

Due to her extensive contribution to the Middle East, Farah has earned a reputation as one of the leading and most influential business leaders

Legal CEO of the Year at 2019’s CEO Awards

General Counsel of the Year – Oath Middle East Legal Awards 2019

General Counsel of the Year – Middle East Legal Awards 2020

Woman of the Year – Big Projects Middle east Awards 2019

Women of Influence in the Arab World – CEO Magasine 2021

Inspiring Femal Business Leaders – Arabian Business 2022

Positively Impacting People’s Lives

Farah Zafar is the CEO of Lyvely. With Lyvely, she and her Co-founders are building a fully integrated platform that will assist content creators, independent professionals, and businesses to monetize their skills and passion online. The Lyvely team is developing the first creator-driven platform that enhances creators’ and consumers’ experiences through a revenue generation model, with the vision to help people get paid for doing what they love, the entire team hopes to make a positive difference in people’s lives and help people achieve their mission, vision and transition the masses from Web 2 to a more empowering Web 3 world.

An advocate of Female Empowerment

Farah is passionate about female empowerment and the growing role of female leaders in the Middle East. She also provides mentorship and support to upcoming dynamic female leaders.

When Farah started more than 25 years ago, the corporate sector in the Middle East was incredibly male-dominated. However, since then the region has made significant leaps in support and recruitment of women across various sectors. She believes that without the support of the progressive leadership of UAE and Saudi Arabia, she would never be able to get the opportunity to work as Chief Legal Officer for multiple large organizations.

Farah Zafar considers herself fortunate enough to witness the rise of Arab women in every sector. She has seen Arab women to conquer the world and step out of the shadows in their unique ways to pave the way for others. In her last 2 decades of professional career, Farah Zafar has seen Arab women become influential leaders, ministers, Olympians, Filmmakers, and entrepreneurs. She feels immensely proud to witness their growth and dominance.

Farah’s journey from Rockstar Lawyer To Tech CEO is one where she hopes to positively impact and inspire more females to venture into technology and the future of Web 3.