Sindhi Village Girl Umaima Mendhro Launches San Francisco Tech Startup
Vida, a San Francisco technology startup co-founded by Umaimah Mendhro from Akri village in Sindh, Pakistan, has received $1.3 million funding from Google Ventures, Universal Music Group and others, according to Tech Crunch.
The startup bills itself as "socially responsible" with the objective of using technology to provide a way for designers, artists and other creatives anywhere in the world to make a viable living through their work.
Vida CEO Umaima Mendhro joins a growing list of successful Pakistani-American women that includes Shama Zehra in finance, Shaan Kandawalla in technology, Shazia Sikandar in the Arts and Fatima Ali in fine cuisine.
“I am from a very small town in Pakistan and was home-schooled much of my life because we didn’t have proper schools around. I taught myself how to cut, sketch, sew, stitch, block print, screen print, oil paint, and more,” she told Tech Crunch. “Yet I couldn’t get myself to pursue art as a profession because I feared I wouldn’t be able to make a living with it,” Mendhro said. “With a love for fashion and design, I was also acutely aware of the hundreds of millions of people employed in textile and garment production, who could never get out of a cycle of poverty.”
Vida brings together painters, photographers, graphic designers, sculptors, 3D artists, architects, and textile and print designers from around the world who participate in the platform at no cost, then receive a 10% revenue share on products sold. Additionally, VIDA often works with its textile mills, printers, and cut and sew factories, removing the middleman costs from the equation. Vida uses "Direct to Fabric Digital Printing Technology" for its offerings.
Currently, VIDA designers include: Elle Magazine's 'Up and Coming Fashion Designer from Sweden, Emma Lundgren,' Vogue.com's top 10 fashion graduates to watch, Cigdem Keskin from Turkey, and Tokyo based 'Top Hat Designer of the Year,' Honoyo Imai. Manufacturing partners include: Karachi based fashion label and manufacturing houses, Sania Maskatiya and FNKAsia.
Umaimah has a bachelor's degree from Cornell University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Here's what she says about herself in her intro on HBS website: "I want to live a life that compels people who do not seem to share a common thread to see if, at a raw human level, we really are that different. A life that gives people reason to reason for themselves... to pause and question the comfortable assumptions. To form and inform beliefs. And never give up common sense for common opinion."
Here's a CNN story on Smartphone apps success in Pakistan:
http://dai.ly/x14vmjt
Pakistan Smartphone App Success by dm_51ea373e71f84
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Success Stories of Pakistani-American Women
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Status of Women in Pakistan
Microfinancing in Pakistan
Gender Gap Worst in South Asia
Status of Women in India
Female Literacy Lags in South Asia
Land For Landless Women
Are Women Better Off in Pakistan Today?
Growing Insurgency in Swat
Religious Leaders Respond to Domestic Violence
Fighting Agents of Intolerance
A Woman Speaker: Another Token or Real Change
A Tale of Tribal Terror
Mukhtaran Mai-The Movie
World Economic Forum Survey of Gender Gap
Vida CEO Umaima Mendhro joins a growing list of successful Pakistani-American women that includes Shama Zehra in finance, Shaan Kandawalla in technology, Shazia Sikandar in the Arts and Fatima Ali in fine cuisine.
“I am from a very small town in Pakistan and was home-schooled much of my life because we didn’t have proper schools around. I taught myself how to cut, sketch, sew, stitch, block print, screen print, oil paint, and more,” she told Tech Crunch. “Yet I couldn’t get myself to pursue art as a profession because I feared I wouldn’t be able to make a living with it,” Mendhro said. “With a love for fashion and design, I was also acutely aware of the hundreds of millions of people employed in textile and garment production, who could never get out of a cycle of poverty.”
Currently, VIDA designers include: Elle Magazine's 'Up and Coming Fashion Designer from Sweden, Emma Lundgren,' Vogue.com's top 10 fashion graduates to watch, Cigdem Keskin from Turkey, and Tokyo based 'Top Hat Designer of the Year,' Honoyo Imai. Manufacturing partners include: Karachi based fashion label and manufacturing houses, Sania Maskatiya and FNKAsia.
Umaimah has a bachelor's degree from Cornell University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Here's what she says about herself in her intro on HBS website: "I want to live a life that compels people who do not seem to share a common thread to see if, at a raw human level, we really are that different. A life that gives people reason to reason for themselves... to pause and question the comfortable assumptions. To form and inform beliefs. And never give up common sense for common opinion."
Here's a CNN story on Smartphone apps success in Pakistan:
http://dai.ly/x14vmjt
Pakistan Smartphone App Success by dm_51ea373e71f84
Haq's Musings
Karachi Slum Girl Goes to Harvard
Success Stories of Pakistani-American Women
Pakistani Woman Engineer Wins Grace Hopper Award
Working Women Bring About Silent Revolution in Pakistan
Status of Women in Pakistan
Microfinancing in Pakistan
Gender Gap Worst in South Asia
Status of Women in India
Female Literacy Lags in South Asia
Land For Landless Women
Are Women Better Off in Pakistan Today?
Growing Insurgency in Swat
Religious Leaders Respond to Domestic Violence
Fighting Agents of Intolerance
A Woman Speaker: Another Token or Real Change
A Tale of Tribal Terror
Mukhtaran Mai-The Movie
World Economic Forum Survey of Gender Gap
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As a student fortunate enough to be studying in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – and so geographically separated from these realities – the story deeply impacted her. Even though she managed to land a six-figure engineering job after graduation, Saba couldn’t get the story out of her mind.
“In addition, I had always carried within me a deep love for the beautiful craft techniques I saw in Pakistan, where I grew up, as well as in my travels around the world – India, Bhutan, Ethiopia, and Sri Lanka,” she recounts. “I felt that this talent was stunted due to a lack of opportunities and connections to larger markets.”
So in 2011 – when America was still recovering from the effects of a terrible recession – Saba decided to return to her homeland and try to make a difference. She unwittingly stumbled upon her life’s mission in the process.
“I started a pilot in Pakistan to provide young women access to basic education and livelihoods. As it started gaining traction in the local community, I realized that it lit my fire like nothing had before,” she says. “Quitting my job after that was a no-brainer.”
The pilot program – which evolved into a full-fledged non-profit organization called BLISS – involved after-school classes in which girls learnt embroidery and needlework. Their embroidered fabric would then be sent to local producers to be finished into high-quality handbags, which were sold in boutiques. The proceeds would be used to fund the girls’ education, as well as recruit other students.
Their handiwork soon became extremely popular with customers not just locally, but from all over the world. In an article on Medium, Saba recalls an encouraging note from a customer from Canada:
I’ve never loved a thing as much as I love my BLISS bag. You make bags that change the world! People ask about it because it is so unusual, so lovely; it is embroidered art. When I tell them the story of families lifted economically, the bag becomes so much more beautiful.
In addition, the handbags were featured in several national and international media platforms, and even in fashion shows. On the surface, it seemed like a success, but there was a deeper issue that had Saba worrying behind closed doors – how the team was going to go about “scaling up our model after the initial proof of concept.” At that time, the BLISS team had a grand total of two people, with just 40 artisan women under its wings.
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A massive overhaul of both business model and mindsets was what came next as BLISS was re-branded into the for-profit Popinjay, and came online in late 2013. The name is a Middle English word that means parrot.
“We chose a parrot because it is an animal that is associated with a voice,” Saba explains. “Our parrot stands for the voice of good fashion, the voice of the artisan women whose skills and stories we spread, and the voice of the consumer who wants to create positive impact with their purchase.” https://www.techinasia.com/popinjay-make-poverty-history-pakistani-women/
Posted by Sabine te Braake | Dec 8, 2018 |
https://innovationorigins.com/tufail-from-pakistan/
Name: Tufail Shahzad
Country of origin: Pakistan
Work: Naval architect and innovation manager at MasterShip Netherlands
We meet Tufail at restaurant De Restauratie at the Eindhoven train station. He lives in Helmond and takes the train to Eindhoven daily and on the day of the interview, he has to attend a lecture at the Technical University of Eindhoven. “Next to my job, I’m also studying Artificial Intelligence & Innovation Management at the university because I need more information about it for my current project at MasterShip.” Tufail’s curiosity in all kinds of subjects prevails in the stories he tells about his journey of the last couple of years. “I like to be challenged and always want to try new things.”
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Tufail was raised in a small Pakistani village called Dajal: a small union council of one of the most underdeveloped districts in Pakistan. His older brothers studied elsewhere in Pakistan and his parents hoped Tufail would stay home with them. “But that didn’t happen. When I was 17 years old I wanted to move to China to enroll in a program in Aerospace Engineering at Northwestern Polytechnical University. My parents and grandfather were against it. They were afraid I wouldn’t return home any more. Once you know how to fly, you don’t go back in the cage again. In the end, they let me leave to after they understood I really wanted to study there. I had never spent a night without my parents and was kind of lazy because as the youngest I didn’t have to do a lot at home. So that was an excellent base to live on my own in a different country,” Tufail says with a grin.
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Those first months I had a hard time connecting to my new surroundings. The turning point was a family homestay in JiuJiang JiangXi. I was welcomed in a Chinese family where I learned more about the culture and learned to speak Chinese. I stayed with them for 40 days. I also got lots of love from the family and they treated me as their own son. Today, I’m still in contact with them.”
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“I graduated this year in February and I tried to find a job. I got a lot of rejections due to having no work experience in the industry. I went back to Pakistan because when you get rejected all the time, it’s better to be with your family. I kept applying for jobs. I found a wonderful job opening at MasterShip, but they were looking for someone with 5 to 10 years of work experience. I wasn’t on that level yet but I got in contact with them. They liked my resume and we had a Skype conversation. Later they told me there wasn’t a position for me yet, but they would like to stay in touch for some future openings. Later I went to Dubai for a job interview, which went well, and when I was waiting on the airport to go home, I got an email from the CEO of MasterShip: he wanted me to lead an artificial intelligence project, a very big challenge for me and the company. Everything about it was new to me and again a new challenge even in the shipbuilding industry. When I came home, my family asked how Dubai was. ‘Good, but I’m going to Europe again’ was my answer. And that’s how I ended up in Eindhoven.”
After the all the arrangements were made, Tufail moved to Eindhoven in October 2018. “I recently moved to Helmond, but eventually I would like to live in Eindhoven again. I’m still settling in at my apartment. I also want to get to know Eindhoven better and also have more of a social life. I have to manage my time well so I can go to events of the Hub for expats or something. I also want to learn Dutch so I can make contact more easily and I also think it shows respect for the country where you live when you speak the language. Eindhoven is the place I once dreamed about but didn’t know yet. I’m really happy here.”
https://www.thenews.com.pk/latest/484373-pakistan-space-scientist-dr-yarjan-abdul-samad-makes-country-proud
Balochi youth Dr Yarjan Abdul Samad has made Pakistan proud to have become the first space scientist at the world’s best and the Britain’s leading university of Cambridge.
Dr Yarjan works at the Cambridge Graphene Centre, Engineering Department of the University of Cambridge. His department involves research work in connection with the devices used in the space-bound satellites. The institution is run in collaboration with the European Space Agency and other research institutions.
“At the department, we make devices that are used in the space,” Dr Yarjan told Geo News. He belongs to a far-flung village, Buleda, located off Turbat, Balochistan. “I am proud that as a Baloch and a Pakistani, I’m the first Pakistani to work as a space scientist at the Cambridge University.”
We are making efforts to work out the devices that function without any energy and electricity, he pointed out. These devices will provide cooling to the spacecrafts while in space, he said.
The young scientist performed his scientific experiments several times at zero gravity in space during three years.
The young Pakistani scientist said he was willing to share his technology and experiments with the Pakistani Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO).
Dr Yarjan said he was also willing to train the Pakistani space scientists. “We launch flights, including the parabolic ones or sounding rockets, for our experiments. We can replicate them in Pakistan too,” he remarked. The space scientist said the technology may be launched in Pakistan as well, he pointed out.
I’m used to struggle very hard like soldiers, he responded to query regarding the troubles and constraints he faces during his space travels. “Our job is like that of soldiers,” he said. “There is no space for any fear when you are committed to your work.”
The space technology is going to make progress by leaps and bounds in the days to come to serve different purposes, including improving the environments, he believes.
I was 16 when I left home, and I’ve worked very hard to become the independent 26-year-old that I am today. I was born in a rural village in Pakistan called Jhang, and grew up in a conservative Muslim family. I’m the first woman in my family to go to college, and I’m lucky to have been able to attend high school. In a male-dominated society, where females are not encouraged to go to school let alone to pursue higher education, I decided to become an engineer.
After college, I worked as a drilling specialist on oil rigs in the Amazon rainforests in Colombia. Aged 22, with barely a word of Spanish except ¡Hola!, and having lived in a protective environment all my life, I found myself working 16+ hours for 30-40 days at a time, sleeping in trailers on-site, and often the only woman on the rigs. It was hard work, but I was proud of myself, and excited to be independent. During the year of rigorous field work, I recognized the power of technology to solve real-world problems. I realized that solving problems was what I cared deeply about, and decided that I wanted to pursue advanced research in order to do this.
While in Colombia, I applied to graduate school at Stanford and got in. Currently, I’m a PhD student in Chemical Engineering. The primary focus of my research is to develop a high-resolution, fast-detection X-ray imaging system to improve traditional X-ray imaging. This work brings together multiple disciplines including optics, X-ray physics, microfluidics, chemistry and computer science. There are many applications, one being the potential to improve the diagnostic accuracy of early-stage breast cancer at a reduced radiation dose.
My mom is very proud of me. She keeps telling me that she didn’t live the life she wanted to, and she’s glad that I am pursuing my dreams. Hearing those words from her have motivated me to stay on my path. I was recently awarded the Schlumberger Faculty for the Future fellowship. The grant funds PhD studies of aspiring female professors from developing countries. My dream is to one day have a research lab and commercialize technologies that the lab develops. I’m passionate about research, but I want to make sure it has real-world applications.
https://profiles.stanford.edu/maha-yusuf
Taunton High School senior MahNoor Abbas and her family immigrated to the United States from Pakistan to have access to better opportunities.
In September, 17-year-old Abbas will achieve that goal, attending Cornell University to study computer science.
"I never imagined beyond my neighborhood," she said. "But now I'm excited to be going. My family made sacrifices so I could do this, and it's paying off."
Abbas, grew up in a small town in Pakistan outside Haripur. In 2006, when she was still a small child, her father and two of her siblings moved to the U.S.
Abbas's family expected her mother, herself and two other siblings to be able to join them a year or so after her father immigrated, but because of the U.S. immigration system, they ended up waiting 10 years before being allowed to immigrate.
"[My mother] was the one there taking care of us and making sure we took advantage of better opportunities," she said.
One of those opportunities was moving from a public to private school, which Abbas was able to do in the fourth grade.
Finally, during Abbas's eighth grade year, she, her mother and her siblings joined her father in Taunton.
While Abbas was grateful to have her family united, moving to America was no cake walk. She said she quickly realized that the social norms were very different.
"People were much less concerned with doing things for others and their community," she said. "It was much more individualistic, like people were focused on getting ahead in terms of their own success."
At first, Abbas encountered a language barrier, but already speaking two other languages — Urdu and Hindko — she was able to pick up English pretty quickly, becoming comfortable with it within her first year in Taunton.
Abbas also encountered discrimination due to being Muslim, such as other high schoolers questioning whether it is a privilege or a right for her to wear a hijab in school.
Another issue has been people associating her religion with terrorism.
"People think it's ok to call it 'Islamic terrorism' — that's something I've had to correct people on," she said. "I don't think [terrorism] is something that should be associated with my religion. Those men think they are following the religion, but they aren't."
“The desert was 20 minutes away. The groundwater was sour. There were filtration systems, but without electricity, you can’t use them,” she says.
In this atmosphere, Hameed grew up, admiring her father. He owned farmland, where wheat, mangos and cotton were grown. He also was an immigration attorney who traveled frequently in his work to the United States and Great Britain. As part of his work, he ran a pro bono legal clinic for the poor.
“He was a government advocate for ushr and zakat, which is a way of redistributing alms to the poor. Zakat is one of the five pillars of Islam,” she says. “He helped people file paperwork, get green cards.”
The importance of education was instilled in Hameed from a young age.
“It was very hard. The closest school was 2½ hours away” by bus, she says. “I had to go to Quran school, too. I got up early and wouldn’t get home until 10, 10:30 at night.”
As she got older, she moved to Islamabad, the country’s capital.
“My sister and I ... had to live there to get access to education,” she says. In Islamabad, she missed her family.
“The void was always there.”
Later, her father decided to bring his family to the United States. Then tragedy struck. Always sickly and often overworked, her father died while processing his family’s final immigration paperwork. The rest of Urwa’s family — her sister, her two brothers and their mother — went ahead with the plans to go to America. They settled in Vernon, where several of Hameed’s aunts lived.
Hameed’s education here got off to a rocky start.
“I was initially placed in Vernon Center Middle School. I was quite upset. I told my mother, this is really easy,” she says. “The math and English classes were teaching me things I had learned four years ago. I was intellectually unchallenged and frustrated.”
Later, she was pushed up two grades and finished at Rockville High before moving on to Boston College.
Hameed is fluent in Punjabi and Urdu. She can fluently read and write Arabic, which she learned in Quran school. She learned English in Pakistan, but didn’t become verbally fluent until emigrating.
“I never spoke to anyone in English there,” she says. She also speaks Saraiki, a Pakistani language, “at about 90%.”
“The tribe who worked on our farmland, they spoke it. My family interacted with them,” she says. Since coming to America, she has learned a bit of Spanish.
At Boston College, Hameed got a job in the office of residential life and she did research for professors who were writing books. As a freshman, she traveled to the Balkans to study the philosophy of war and peace. She unsuccessfully ran for student body president and she advocated for Halal food and a mosque on campus.
She also traveled back to Pakistan three times to research her self-published book titled “Steering Toward Change: Women Politicians Challenging Patriarchy, Class and Power in Pakistan,” for which she interviewed and profiled 45 Pakistani women politicians.
“Every one of these women had to overcome a patriarchal culture to succeed. Politics is seen as the realm of men, where women are not welcome. They have to work every day to keep their space,” she says. “Women’s interests are not represented in politics. They have that urge to represent women.”
She was happy at Boston College, a Catholic school, although she is Muslim. The student body, about 9,000 people, has about 250 Muslims, she says.
“I am a practicing and believing Muslim. I was more comfortable being my religious self in a religious school than I would have been in a secular school,” she says.