Shaheena Attarwala

Shaheena Attarwala works at Microsoft, where she heads research & design and for Emerging Economies and helps design solutions that help solve for the unmet and unarticulated needs of the next 1 billion people. Born to a poor family in a village in Uttar Pradesh, Shaheena was raised in the slums of Mumbai. She resisted an early marriage and pursued education fearlessly despite family challenges. Life in the slum was hard and exposed her to severest living conditions, gender bias, and sexual harassment but it also fueled her curiosity to learn and to design a different life for herself. The first time Shaheena saw a computer in her school she believed that I could be a great leveler, that anyone who was sitting in front of it would have opportunities. But she was designated to do needlework instead of computers due to poor grades, despite the rejection she dreamt of building a career in the field of technology. She scraped every penny to get her own computer, walked home, skipped lunches, and thereafter there was no looking back. Shaheena quit programming and chose to pursue a career in design because 'design' made her believe that possibilities exist and things can change.
She believes that technology is a huge enabler and an equalizer. Today she mentors** girls to fight!** To fight when they are held back, be economically independent, and do whatever it takes to acquire education, skills, and careers, this is what’s going to be a huge game-changer for young girls who still have to fight and she does not wish upon any girl in her circumstances to have her journey Unless that happens the dream of an egalitarian society is faraway.