Rakhshanda Rukham is a 26 years old young woman entrepreneur who is best known for her efforts to empower the women of Bangladesh with technology since the age of 21. She is the exchange program alumni of U.S. State Department.

She is holding the leadership of Google Women Techmakers Bangladesh which is a community to empower women with technology having more than 5000 active members and 15 ambassadors at universities and regions.

Rakhshanda finished her graduation in Telecommunication Engineering from a very remote area of Bangladesh, which is Dinajpur, where women hardly get chances to break the barriers towards success. With a deep passion for the betterment of the women and to change the male-dominated tech ecosystem of Bangladesh, she persisted herself towards uplifting women’s participation in ICT and founded BEGUM which is again a platform which helps women to get online through ICT knowledge.

Rakhshanda believes ICT has a strategic link with poverty reduction. She trained 57 slum women of Dhaka City with basic ICT skills that help them to get a better job, doing good at business and having a better life through BEGUM. Along with BEGUM, she empowered more than 4000 women of 35 Educational Institutions through ICT programs and created an ecosystem where women are independent, self-supporting.

She is the creator of women techfest of Bangladesh where 300 women made 37 mobile apps within only 4 hours of time in a very remote area of Bangladesh. In her bucket, there are full of impactful stories like organizing Google Android Study Jam where 786 Mobile Apps were developed by 30 Universities students which counts as an example of Bangladesh Tech industry. With her good mentorship capability, she was the mentor of National Hackathon of Bangladesh 2016 with 1000+ participants.

For her first-hand experience in the Bangladesh tech market, she helped 150 women and men gathered together in the “Breakinequality — Devs Without Borders” whhich was powered by Google in Canada by providing social context, parameters in Bangladesh market who were building solutions for Bangladesh through social impact project.

She trained herself to be very focused and good decision maker during the toughest conditions. Her greatest skill is to understand people she is working with and working for. In past, she was the top speaker at Google Developer Group Summit 2016 at San Francisco.

Rakhshanda has received various awards for her potential and work, like BRAC Manthan Digital Innovation Award 2016. She was the top women finalist for BEGUM in Seedstars Dhaka. She also attended two major conferences, one is Women Techmakers Summit at Google Singapore HQ and Google IO(2016 & 2017) at San Francisco. She attended “ONE YOUNG WORLD SUMMIT 2017” for her good leadership capability. Also, she is the Alumni, Exchange Program, U.S. State Department. In 2017, she attended the Global Entrepreneurship Summit by U.S. State Department in Hyderabad, India, November 28-30. The theme was ‘Women First, Prosperity for All.’

Rakhshanda is the Co-founder of Preneur Lab which is a technology for social good company. She is responsible for the growth of the company and looking after the ventures. She had a good contribution to “Dhaka Public Toilet App by Preneur Lab” which won the World Summit Award 2017. Recently, she is working on the Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism scene and successfully run many projects with renowned donors including Democracy International, USAID, UN Women, Google, Facebook and Youtube. Recently, she attended Non-Violent Election workshop by U.S. Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization (CSO) team at American Center, Dhaka, U.S. Embassy Dhaka, Bangladesh. She was the resource person of Training of Trainers for the Girl Ambassadors for Peace for Awareness by Global Network of Women Peace-Builders (GNWP).

Rakhshanda has a very good experience of working with one of the renowned social enterprises(Dnet) of Bangladesh as the lead of School of Entrepreneurship and as a project coordinator of Magnito Digital.

She is also the manager of Google Developer Group Dhaka, which is a global organization for technology professionals that hosted more than 500 tech programs all over Bangladesh.

Rakhshanda was featured in different national and international news portals for her contributions for women industry of Bangladesh like, Pink in Tech (Daily Observer), Empowering Women with Technology (Daily Observer), Google organizes 5 workshops for females in Chittagong (Cambodian Times), Bangladeshi girl elected ‘top speaker’ at Google developer summit (The Independent), Google Android Study Jam participants develop 700+ apps (The Daily Star) I WANT BEGUM TO BE THE GO-TO PLACE FOR ANY SOLUTION WOMEN NEED (Fintech), Bangladeshi girl elected as ‘Top Speaker’ for upcoming Google I/O Developer Summit (Daily Star)

Her parents have had a major impact on her life; her father instilled a strong social conscience, while her mother taught her to be independent minded. Rakhshanda believes entrepreneurship is a craft of solving problems keeping sustainability and growth in mind. Young entrepreneurs around the world solving the world’s most challenging problems with innovative ideas, creating employment and scaling up the solutions at a global level. With this inspirations, she is effectively giving her contribution for the betterment of Bangladesh as a young women entrepreneur

Hira is a software engineer currently working in the Startup and Tech Industry as an Assistant Community Manager where she is responsible for helping startups achieve 10x growth by managing different programs and events. She also voluntarily manage Google's Developer Group Community in Karachi, Pakistan with an aim to build a 150,000 member community by 2025! She has been addicted to building things from scratch, experimentation, growth, and creativity, since forever!

She was actively involved in different local and international communities like Google Developers Groups, WordPress, Techstars, etc throughout her bachelor's. Because of this, she has got early exposure to the tech and startup world. This exposure and experience of almost 4 years, always help her in taking decisions, creating brand development strategies, and advising startups on their growth strategies!