South Asian Women Leaders For Change

OPENING REMARKS

Cecile Fruman is Director, Regional Integration and Engagement in the South Asia Region (SAR). She is responsible for fostering collaborative activities amongst SAR countries and managing partnerships and engagements with SAR and global development partners.  Previously, Cecile was Senior Manager for Financial Intermediary Funds (FIFs) and Partner Relations in the Development Finance Vice-Presidency (DFi) where she oversaw a portfolio of FIFs that disbursed in the order of $6 billion a year in grants for key global development priorities to multiple implementation agencies and coordinated the World Bank’s strategic engagement with development partners. Cecile has dedicated her career to international development with a focus on private sector solutions. 

MODERATOR

Subina Shrestha is an award-winning journalist and filmmaker from Nepal. From undercover reporting in Myanmar during cyclone Nargis, to investigating child slavery, and to covering Nepal’s earthquake and its aftermath, Subina has steered major news coverage, often as the only international journalist on the scene; and told stories of people whose lives have been affected by natural and humanmade disasters. She was a 2017 Nieman fellow at Harvard and 2019 Global Media Makers fellow at Film Independent.  

Asma Khan is the chef and owner of Darjeeling Express. She moved to

Cambridge from Calcutta in 1991. Now residing in London with her husband and two boys, she comes from a royal background – Rajput on her father’s side and Bengali on her mother’s. After studying law, Asma went on to do a PhD in British Constitutional Law at King's College London. Asma is the first British chef to feature in Netflix's Emmy nominated Chef's Table. Her episode also received a 2020 James Beard Award nomination.  Business Insider named her number 1 on their list of "100 Coolest People in Food and Drink". The Evening Standard listed her in The Progress 1000 as one of London’s most influential people 2019. She has been included in the eighth edition of the GG2 Power List –profiling Britain’s 101 most influential Asians and she is now the first chef to be featured on Vogue's list of 25 most influential women of year for 2020.

Deeply moved by the appalling gender disparity in STEM fields, Ramla - a Fulbright Scholar - initiated Women Engineers Pakistan (WEP): a grass-roots organization catalyzing participation and enabling retention of women in STEM fields, now transformed into a nationwide movement, buttressed by the overwhelming support of women all over the globe. When not advocating for gender equality, she is a structural and earthquake engineer, and a PhD researcher for structural safety and resilience.

In managing the World Bank’s engagement in South Asia to end extreme poverty and boost shared prosperity, Schafer leads relations with Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Before joining the region, Schafer served as the Vice President for Global Themes where he oversaw the World Bank’s engagement in corporate priority areas of Fragility, Conflict and Violence and especially Gender amongst others. A German national, Schafer has held technical and managerial positions in the World Bank as well as the European Commission for over 30 years.