Stories of Successful Pakistani-American Women

[Riaz Haq]

Shama Zehra, Shaan Kandawalla, Shahzia Sikandar and Fatima Ali are among the many Pakistani-American women making their mark in America.

Shama Zehra is in finance, Shaan Kandawalla in technology, Shazia Sikandar in the Arts and Fatima Ali in fine cuisine.

Shama Zehra

Shama Zehra is the CEO of Wall Street firm Aligned Independent Advisors. She began her career as an entrepreneur in the apparel industry in Pakistan in 1991 with a women apparel firm co-founded with her mother and sister. Later, she moved in to financial services industry in 1995 where she has worked in Investment Banking, Consumer Credit Products and Private Wealth Management. Prior to forming Aligned, Shama worked with Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Standard Chartered Bank and MCB Bank, the largest private sector bank in Pakistan in early nineties.

Shaan Kandawalla

Shaan is the CEO of PlayDate Digital which makes educational applications for kids. She started it in 2012 after many years of experience working at Nickelodeon and Hasbro. Apps produced by PlayDate feature Hasbro brands like Play-Doh, My Little Pony and Transformers. She is a rare female in a male-dominated world. A study by the mobile-tech company Appcelerator reported that 96 percent of all mobile-app developers are male, most between the ages of 20 and 29. Yet market research indicates that women are the app stores’ biggest customers. Women install 40 percent more apps than men, have 17 percent more paid apps and pay 87 percent more for those paid apps, according to data from Apsalar, a mobile-analytics company.

Shahzia Sikandar

Shazia Sikandar is best known for her Indo-Persian miniatures. Trained as a miniaturist at the National College of Arts in Lahore, Pakistan, Sikander pursues this centuries-old tradition by challenging notions about the division of art and craft. Her work has been displayed at numerous solo and group exhibits at such national and international venues as the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the National Gallery of Canada, the Venice Biennale 2005, and the Musée d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris.




Fatima Ali, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America (CIA), may be the only non-American female chef in any of 70 top New York City restaurants, according to a survey done by Voice of America. Her  unique blend of Pakistani spices and Western cuisines won her the top award of $10,000 on the popular Food Network TV show "Chopped".

Fatima Ali

Pakistani women in Pakistan are also increasingly joining the work force to contribute to nation's development. "More of them(women) than ever are finding employment, doing everything from pumping gasoline and serving burgers at McDonald’s to running major corporations", says a report in Businessweek magazine.



Beyond company or government employment, there are a number of NGOs focused on encouraging self-employment and entrepreneurship among Pakistani women by offering skills training and microfinancing. Kashf Foundation led by a woman CEO and BRAC are among such NGOs. They all report that the success and repayment rate among female borrowers is significantly higher than among male borrowers.



In rural Sindh, the PPP-led government is empowering women by granting over 212,864 acres of government-owned agriculture land to landless peasants in the province. Over half of the farm land being given is prime nehri (land irrigated by canals) farm land, and the rest being barani or rain-dependent. About 70 percent of the5,800 beneficiaries of this gift are women. Other provincial governments, especially the Punjab government have also announced land allotment for women, for which initial surveys are underway, according to ActionAid Pakistan.



Both the public and private sectors are recruiting women in Pakistan's workplaces ranging from Pakistani military, civil service, schools, hospitals, media, advertising, retail, fashion industry, publicly traded companies, banks, technology companies, multinational corporations and NGOs, etc.



Here are some statistics and data that confirm the growth and promotion of women in Pakistan's labor pool:

1. A number of women have moved up into the executive positions, among them Unilever Foods CEO Fariyha Subhani, Engro Fertilizer CFO Naz Khan, Maheen Rahman CEO of IGI Funds and Roshaneh Zafar Founder and CEO of Kashf Foundation.

2. Women now make up 4.6% of board members of Pakistani companies, a tad lower than the 4.7% average in emerging Asia, but higher than 1% in South Korea, 4.1% in India and Indonesia, and 4.2% in Malaysia, according to a February 2011 report on women in the boardrooms.

3. Female employment at KFC in Pakistan has risen 125 percent in the past five years, according to a report in the NY Times.

4. The number of women working at McDonald’s restaurants and the supermarket behemoth Makro has quadrupled since 2006.



5. There are now women taxi drivers in Pakistan. Best known among them is Zahida Kazmi described by the BBC as "clearly a respected presence on the streets of Islamabad".



6. Several women fly helicopters and fighter jets in the military and commercial airliners in the state-owned and private airlines in Pakistan.

Here are a few excerpts from the recent Businessweek story written by Naween Mangi:

About 22 percent of Pakistani females over the age of 10 now work, up from 14 percent a decade ago, government statistics show. Women now hold 78 of the 342 seats in the National Assembly, and in July, Hina Rabbani Khar, 34, became Pakistan’s first female Foreign Minister. “The cultural norms regarding women in the workplace have changed,” says Maheen Rahman, 34, chief executive officer at IGI Funds, which manages some $400 million in assets. Rahman says she plans to keep recruiting more women for her company.

Much of the progress has come because women stay in school longer. More than 42 percent of Pakistan’s 2.6 million high school students last year were girls, up from 30 percent 18 years ago. Women made up about 22 percent of the 68,000 students in Pakistani universities in 1993; today, 47 percent of Pakistan’s 1.1 million university students are women, according to the Higher Education Commission. Half of all MBA graduates hired by Habib Bank, Pakistan’s largest lender, are now women. “Parents are realizing how much better a lifestyle a family can have if girls work,” says Sima Kamil, 54, who oversees 1,400 branches as head of retail banking at Habib. “Every branch I visit has one or two girls from conservative backgrounds,” she says.

Some companies believe hiring women gives them a competitive advantage. Habib Bank says adding female tellers has helped improve customer service at the formerly state-owned lender because the men on staff don’t want to appear rude in front of women. And makers of household products say female staffers help them better understand the needs of their customers. “The buyers for almost all our product ranges are women,” says Fariyha Subhani, 46, CEO of Unilever Pakistan Foods, where 106 of the 872 employees are women. “Having women selling those products makes sense because they themselves are the consumers,” she says.

To attract more women, Unilever last year offered some employees the option to work from home, and the company has run an on-site day-care center since 2003. Engro, which has 100 women in management positions, last year introduced flexible working hours, a day-care center, and a support group where female employees can discuss challenges they encounter. “Today there is more of a focus at companies on diversity,” says Engro Fertilizer CFO Khan, 42. The next step, she says, is ensuring that “more women can reach senior management levels.”

The gender gap in South Asia remains wide, and women in Pakistan still face significant obstacles. But there is now a critical mass of working women at all levels showing the way to other Pakistani women.

I strongly believe that working women have a very positive and transformational impact on society by having fewer children, and by investing more time, money and energies for better nutrition, education and health care of their children. They spend 97 percent of their income and savings on their families, more than twice as much as men who spend only 40 percent on their families, according to Zainab Salbi, Founder, Women for Women International, who appeared on CNN's GPS with Fareed Zakaria.

Here's an interesting video titled "Redefining Identity" about Pakistan's young technologists, including women, posted by Lahore-based 5 Rivers Technologies:





Redefining Identity- How Young Technologists... by faizanmaqsood1010
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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

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World Economic Forum Survey of Gender Gap

[Riaz Haq]

Womenomics from Financial Times on 


The first convert to Islam was a businesswoman. She was a wealthy trader who inherited her father’s business and later expanded it into an even more impressive enterprise. At one point, she offered a job to a man. He accepted and conducted a trading mission from Mecca to Syria under the tutelage of his female boss.
Her name was Khadija. He was the Prophet Muhammad, and the two later married. Khadija’s personal loyalty to the Prophet and her financial independence were essential pillars of support in the early days spreading the message of Islam.


These facts highlight the unusual economic independence of the woman Muhammad married – and his approval of her sovereign existence. This history is often missing from the narrative within and about Islam – one of many reasons why women have not been a significant economic force in the Muslim world. But this is rapidly changing.
Today’s Muslim world is comprised of 1.6bn people. That is nearly a quarter of the global population, and they contribute about 16 per cent of global gross domestic product, growing at 6 per cent annually. It includes rich petro-states at the cusp of dramatic change such as Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar, as well as members of what Goldman Sachs calls the “Next 11”: Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Turkey, Indonesia and Iran.
Half of these people – 800m – are women. There is an untold, unfolding story hidden in their classrooms, in their careers, and in their purses. In just a generation or two, a widespread education movement has elevated the prospects of millions of women in these countries, from Tehran to Tunis.
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Millions of ordinary women and men have made conscious, and often deeply personal and brave decisions to break tradition, sometimes shunning cultural pressures. These myriad individual decisions will add up to a new segment of the labour market – and an unprecedented consumer power.
A movement has started where economics trumps culture. Changes that took half a century in the US are being compressed into a decade in today’s Muslim world, where they are set to continue at a significantly faster pace. Imagine if the US, in just a few years, had transformed from the 1950s era of The Feminine Mystique to Lean In in the 2010s. That is the magnitude of the change sweeping the Muslim world.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/1caaf96a-68b8-11e4-9eeb-00144feabdc0.html

[Riaz Haq]

Saira Malik is the Chief Investment Officer and Global Portfolio Manager at Nuveen (A TIAA Company).

Currently, She lives in San Francisco, California. She often talks about the struggle her parents made to raise her up being migrated from Pakistan.

https://www.wiki.ng/en/wiki/saira-malik-wiki-and-husband-who-is-she...

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Saira was also featured among 100 most influential woman in US finance by the Barrons on April 16, 2021, for her role in managing Nuveen (A TIAA Company) $417 billion equivalent assets.

https://www.barrons.com/articles/barrons-100-most-influential-women...
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The resilience and determination that helped Saira Malik rise in the asset-management industry has served her company and clients well in the pandemic. A lead player in transforming Nuveen’s equity business, she continues to find new areas of growth.

As chief investment officer of global equities at Nuveen, Malik, 50, oversees equity portfolio management, equity research, equity trading, and target-date, quantitative, and index strategies. As of Dec. 31, she was responsible for $417 billion of Nuveen’s $1.2 trillion in assets under management.

She and her team improved performance last year and continued “to drive more deeply” into environmental, social, and governance investing, she says. As of February, according to the company, Morningstar ranked at least 77% of Nuveen’s U.S. equity assets above their peer-group median over the trailing three- and five-year periods.

Malik, who joined Nuveen in 2003, was “an instrumental leader” in unifying Nuveen’s and TIAA’s equity teams after TIAA acquired Nuveen in 2014, says William Huffman, head of equities and fixed income at Nuveen.

A mother of two young daughters, Malik co-heads two industry affinity organizations—LEAD (Leadership, Education, Advocacy, and Development), which seeks to promote gender diversity in the asset-management industry, and Achieve, a resources group for female professionals.

[Riaz Haq]

Nuveen names chief investment officer
Saira Malik to lead strategy, insights for US$1.2 trillion asset manager

https://www.theasset.com/article/45932/nuveen-names-chief-investmen...

Nuveen, the asset manager of TIAA, has named Saira Malik as its chief investment officer, with responsibility for driving market and investment insights and delivering client asset allocation views from across the firm’s independent investment teams. Nuveen manages US$1.2 trillion in equities, fixed income, real estate, private markets, natural resources, other alternatives and responsible investments.

She will also lead the firm’s global investment committee, which brings together the most senior leaders from Nuveen’s investment teams to deliver the best thinking and actionable portfolio allocation ideas.

Malik will maintain her portfolio management and leadership responsibilities for Nuveen’s US$450 billion global equity business, in addition to developing consensus views alongside colleagues from across the firm’s investment platform.

She will remain lead portfolio manager for the US$132.95 billion CREF Stock strategy and a listed portfolio manager for the US$37.84 billion CREF Growth and US$27.21 billion CREF Global Equities strategies.

Malik, who has 26 years of investment experience in portfolio management, global research and analyst roles, will continue to report to William Huffman, head of the firm’s fixed-income and equity platform.

Huffman says: “Malik is dedicated to delivering strong returns to help secure the financial futures of clients and has been an essential part of the firm for nearly two decades.”

[Riaz Haq]

Nuveen names chief investment officer
Saira Malik to lead strategy, insights for US$1.2 trillion asset manager

https://www.theasset.com/article/45932/nuveen-names-chief-investmen...

Nuveen, the asset manager of TIAA, has named Saira Malik as its chief investment officer, with responsibility for driving market and investment insights and delivering client asset allocation views from across the firm’s independent investment teams. Nuveen manages US$1.2 trillion in equities, fixed income, real estate, private markets, natural resources, other alternatives and responsible investments.

She will also lead the firm’s global investment committee, which brings together the most senior leaders from Nuveen’s investment teams to deliver the best thinking and actionable portfolio allocation ideas.

Malik will maintain her portfolio management and leadership responsibilities for Nuveen’s US$450 billion global equity business, in addition to developing consensus views alongside colleagues from across the firm’s investment platform.

She will remain lead portfolio manager for the US$132.95 billion CREF Stock strategy and a listed portfolio manager for the US$37.84 billion CREF Growth and US$27.21 billion CREF Global Equities strategies.

Malik, who has 26 years of investment experience in portfolio management, global research and analyst roles, will continue to report to William Huffman, head of the firm’s fixed-income and equity platform.

Huffman says: “Malik is dedicated to delivering strong returns to help secure the financial futures of clients and has been an essential part of the firm for nearly two decades.”

[Riaz Haq]

Sara Suleri Goodyear Dies at 68; Known for Memoir of Pakistan
Her 1989 book, “Meatless Days,” is viewed as an important work of postcolonial literature.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/28/books/sara-suleri-goodyear-dead....


Sara Suleri Goodyear, a scholar who vividly evoked her upbringing in Pakistan in “Meatless Days,” a 1989 memoir often cited as a foundational work of post-colonial literature, died on March 20 at her home in Bellingham, Wash. She was 68.

News of her death was posted on the web page of the Yale English department, where she was an emeritus professor and had taught since 1984. A friend and fellow scholar, Fawzia Mustafa of Fordham University, said the cause was chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

“Meatless Days” took its title from the decision by the government of Pakistan, shortly after the country was formed in 1947, to declare two days a week as “meatless” to conserve the country’s supply of cattle and goats. The book is an unconventional memoir, with Professor Suleri Goodyear telling the story of her own life in Pakistan, Britain and the United States through chapters focused on other family members, including her father’s mother, Dadi.

“By the time I knew her,” Professor Suleri Goodyear wrote, “Dadi with her flair for drama had allowed life to sit so heavily upon her back that her spine wilted and froze into a perfect curve, and so it was in the posture of a shrimp that she went scuttling through the day.”

The author Kamila Shamsie, who, like Professor Suleri Goodyear, was born in Karachi, Pakistan, and who first read “Meatless Days” as a teenager, described her reaction to it in a 2005 essay in the British newspaper The Independent.

“What dazzled me most was the book’s structure and style,” she wrote. “It was like nothing I had ever encountered: a memoir that proceeds through metaphor rather than linear narrative, in prose so tightly coiled you must prod certain sentences repeatedly to allow meaning to spring forth.”

The book is full of loss, including the deaths of the author’s mother and sister Ifat, killed when she was hit by a car under mysterious circumstances. It also ponders the search for identity that comes with being born in such a young country, and with being the child of a Pakistani father and Welsh mother, as Ms. Suleri Goodyear was.

And it considers these matters from the perspective of a woman. At one point she wrote of teaching a class at Yale on “third world literature” and being quizzed by a student on why the course didn’t include more women writers.

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She married Austin Goodyear, who owned a building supply company, in 1993. He died in 2005. She recently moved to Bellingham to be closer to her sister Tillat Khalid, who survives her along with a brother, Irfan Suleri.

Professor Suleri Goodyear’s other writings included a 2003 book about her father, “Boys Will Be Boys: A Daughter’s Elegy.” She also wrote numerous scholarly articles. Her memoir, though, is her most enduring work.

“‘Meatless Days’ remains the most extraordinary book I’ve read of/from Pakistan,” Ms. Shamsie wrote on Twitter last week. “It blew the top of my head off when I read it at 17. Still does the same to me now.”

[Riaz Haq]

Sara Suleri, American-Pakistani author who said ‘dream on’ about India-Pakistan Aman ki Asha
Sara's name is on Sapan’s Founding Charter, and she was known for vouching for India-Pakistan peace. But I knew a different side to her.

https://theprint.in/opinion/sara-suleri-american-pakistani-author-d...

By Beena Sarwar


Aur bataiye – ‘Tell me more’ is a polite invitation to keep talking. I can hear Sara Suleri’s voice, naturally husky, made deeper with years of cigarette smoking, and perhaps more recently, with pain and other medications.

She’d send her love to Pakistan whenever I’d call before flying out from Boston, where we had both ended up around 10 years ago – she after retiring as Professor Emeritus of English from Yale University. I had transplanted myself from my home city Karachi, where I was editing Aman Ki Asha or ‘hope for peace’ between India and Pakistan.

“Dream on!” I hear Sara say. And yet, she had agreed, it’s important to keep on going. She was 100 per cent supportive of this, and the push for a regional approach – the South Asia Peace Action Network, or Sapan, the more recent endeavour, launched last year with a wonderful group of intergenerational, cross-border peacemongers.

Sara’s name is on Sapan’s Founding Charter calling on South Asian nations to institute soft borders and a visa-free South Asia, to allow freedom of trade and travel to each other’s citizens, ensure human rights and dignity for all, and to cooperate in all areas, including public health, culture and legal reform, education, and environment.

Her South Asian roots remained strong despite all the years away. If asked, she’d identify herself as Pakistani, “never American-Pakistani”.


Knowing Sara Suleri from her roots
When I’d call Sara after returning from Pakistan, she’d be eager to know what I did, where I went, who I met. On my return in February 2020 ‘B.C.’ — Before Covid – I flew back from Islamabad, having recently visited Lahore where Sara grew up and where I lived for a little over a decade in the 1990s. She was 23 when she left the city in 1976. I was just a little older when I moved there from Karachi in 1988.

Sara spent most of her adult life in America but made frequent visits to Pakistan until health issues prevented her to travel back to her home country. Her last visit may have been at the Second Karachi Literature Festival in 2011, guesses her sister Tillat, younger by five years.

There’s a recording of the event online. A more filled-out Sara than the gaunt one I know read from her chapter on her older sister Ifat from her iconic book Meatless Days.

Walking across the Charles River Bridge on a cold February afternoon, I called Sara. With Covid rampant, meetings were impossible. Over the landline – she had stopped using her cell phone – I sent her the fragrance of the Lahore spring and nargis flowers.

In September 2020, Sara sold her Boston apartment and transplanted the contents to Bellingham, a suburb of Seattle. She made it a point to call before leaving. There was a finality about the goodbye. We wondered when we’ll meet again.

It was a big move, but she could now be near Tillat in Vancouver, Canada, an hour-and-a-half drive away. They were excited about being so close to each other. Earlier, Tillat could visit Sara in Boston only a couple of times a year.

There was no way of knowing when the pandemic would end or that it would drag on for so long. Soon after the move, the borders closed again. Sara and Tillat, so near, and yet so far.

Since the border reopened last summer, Tillat could be with Sara every week for several days. Comfortingly, she and other family members were by Sara’s side when she took her last breath at home on 20 March. She was 68.

It was Asma Jahangir’s passing in Lahore that brought me close to Sara Suleri in Boston.

[Riaz Haq]

(Pakistani-American) Amna Nawaz and Geoff Bennett Named Co-Anchors of PBS NewsHour
Nawaz and Bennett to Succeed Judy Woodruff on Monday, January 2, 2023

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/press-releases/amna-nawaz-and-geoff-be...

"Today is a day I never could’ve imagined when I began my journalism career years ago, or while growing up as a first-generation, Muslim, Pakistani-American. I’m grateful, humbled, and excited for what’s ahead.”


Sharon Rockefeller, President and CEO of WETA and President of NewsHour Productions, today named PBS NewsHour chief correspondent Amna Nawaz and chief Washington correspondent and PBS News Weekend anchor Geoff Bennett co-anchors of the nightly newscast. The PBS NewsHour, co-anchored by Nawaz and Bennett, will launch on Monday, January 2, 2023. Nawaz and Bennett succeed Judy Woodruff, who has solo-anchored PBS’s nightly news broadcast since 2016, prior to which she co-anchored it alongside the late Gwen Ifill.

Bennett has reported from the White House under three presidents and has covered five presidential elections. He joined NewsHour in 2022 from NBC News, where he was a White House correspondent and substitute anchor for MSNBC. In his prior experience, he worked for NPR — beginning as an editor for Weekend Edition and later as a reporter covering Congress and the White House. An Edward R. Murrow Award recipient, Bennett began his journalism career at ABC News’ World News Tonight.

On being named co-anchor of PBS NewsHour, Geoff Bennett said, “I’m proud to work with such a stellar group of journalists in pursuit of a shared mission — providing reliable reporting, solid storytelling and sharp analysis of the most important issues of the day. It’s why PBS NewsHour is one of television’s most trusted and respected news programs and why I’m honored and excited to partner with Amna in building on its rich legacy.”

Nawaz, who has received Peabody Awards for her reporting at NewsHour on January 6, 2021 and global plastic pollution, has served as NewsHour’s primary substitute anchor since she joined the NewsHour in 2018. She previously was an anchor and correspondent at ABC News, anchoring breaking news coverage and leading the network’s livestream coverage of the 2016 presidential election. Before that, she served as foreign correspondent and Islamabad Bureau Chief at NBC News. She is also the founder and former managing editor of NBC’s Asian America platform, and began her journalism career at ABC News Nightline just weeks before the attacks of September 11, 2001.

On being named co-anchor, Amna Nawaz added, “It’s never been more important for people to have access to news and information they trust, and the entire NewsHour team strives relentlessly towards that goal every day. I am honored to be part of this mission, to work with colleagues I admire and adore, and to take on this new role alongside Geoff as we help write the next chapter in NewsHour’s story. Today is a day I never could’ve imagined when I began my journalism career years ago, or while growing up as a first-generation, Muslim, Pakistani-American. I’m grateful, humbled, and excited for what’s ahead.”

In making the announcement, Rockefeller noted, “PBS NewsHour continues to be dedicated to excellence in journalism. Amna and Geoff bring to their new positions three essential qualities for the role – accomplished careers in substantive reporting, dedication to the purpose of journalism to illuminate and inform, and a deep respect for our audiences and the mission of public media.”

[Riaz Haq]

Farha Abbasi earns national recognition for work on minority mental health | MSUToday | Michigan State University


https://com.msu.edu/news_overview/news/2023/march/dr-farha-abbasi-e...

The first conference was conceived in the post-9/11 era, a time when Islamophobia, antisemitism and racism were “rampant and on the rise,” said Abbasi, who was born in Pakistan. For an academic institution, such as MSU, to believe in this notion and tend to the mental health needs of underrepresented and attacked groups like Muslims was a “phenomenal feat.”

Mental health is a privilege in many developing countries, she said, and MSU has the knowledge, resources and compassion to make a profound impact globally. “I am very grateful for the immense support I have received at the department, college and university levels.”

MSU has become a leading name in the field of Muslim mental health and Abbasi hopes to build upon those efforts. She, along with a group of psychiatrists of Pakistani origin, recently met with the president of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan to support mental health infrastructure, inclusive health policies and the decriminalization of suicide in the country. Abbasi also has worked in a variety of other nations, including Indonesia, Jordan, Malaysia and Turkey to provide first aid mental health training, capacity-building projects and more. She hopes to work with the MSU Institute of Global Health to continue integrating mental health into the global health curriculum.

[Riaz Haq]

Ayisha Siddiqa, a human rights and environmental justice activist and a youth fellow with the Law School’s Climate Litigation Accelerator (CLX), was named one of Time magazine’s 2023 Women of the Year on March 2.

https://www.law.nyu.edu/news/ayisha-siddiqa-time-magazine-women-of-....

The award was given to twelve women who are “using their voices to fight for a more equal world,” says Time.

Siddiqa, who is 24 years old, is a co-founder of Polluters Out, a global youth climate advocacy group, as well as a climate activism training course called Fossil Free University. She is the inaugural youth fellow for CLX, a global hub of lawyers and advocates seeking to catalyze legal change to produce action against climate change. CLX is run jointly by the Earth Rights Advocacy Clinic, directed by Professor of Clinical Law César Rodríguez-Garavito, and the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, which Rodríguez-Garavito chairs.

The youth fellowship program began in 2022 to support and mentor promising young climate leaders who, like Siddiqa, are interested in pursuing a legal degree in the future. It also provides legal training in areas such as international negotiation and litigation.

“We see intergenerational collaboration as key to making progress against climate inaction,” says Rodríguez-Garavito, who says that Siddiqa has contributed to CLX’s communication strategies since joining in 2022. “Working with Ayisha’s generation as well as with young lawyers–many of whom are NYU Law alumni and are now full-time CLX staff members–we have seen a potency in that kind of collaboration,” he says. “We have learned as much from the youth movement as they have learned from us.”

Siddiqa, who was born in Pakistan, recounted to Time that as a teenager she began to see the impact that unsafe environments have on communities after witnessing the illness and death of her grandparents due to unsafe drinking water. Eventually, she said, she came to see the deep connections between climate change and human rights. In a video on Time’s website, announcing Siddiqa’s selection, she notes the importance of working collectively and globally to reverse the effects of climate change. “We cannot be individualistic anymore. It will not work,” she said. Siddiqa will continue on as a fellow with CLX until 2024, when she plans to start her legal studies.