“Women Empowerment and Education” was our 7th Webinar, where we were fortunate to discuss the importance of leadership skills, policy level structural changes and societal responsibilities with an absolute luminary, our esteemed and beloved Mr. Asif U Ahmed, Director of the MBA Program. University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh.

We were honored to have this successful entrepreneur, an empowering scholar, and a visionary educator with us. Words would fall short describing his arsenal of accomplishments, achievements and talents. More than any other role he is an absolute Change-Maker. A true embodiment of Hope and Creativity.

While the conversation starter was loaded with the common misconceptions about women’s empowerment, Mr. Asif U Ahmed underscored that one of the prominent misconceptions is to define others’ empowerment according to our own visions and limitations. He defined that empowerment means capabling individuals to make their own decisions.

While discussing women being submissive despite being academically and economically empowered, Asif shared how our contaminated societal values exerts significance in our decision making capacity and limit our growth mindset. When external validations are the pillars of our social values and status quo, tools like education and financial independence often fall short on full empowerment and enlightenment of both women and men. Ahmed encouraged and suggested that reframing the education system with a” led by questions” approach will restructure our value system and regulate our conscious and subconscious biases. It will in turn enhance our students’ exercising of decision making skills and growth mindsets.

Our dialogues also pondered on how the lack of female role models in our society hinders the bandwidth of our dreams and/or goals setting. Asif pointed out the utter lack of female teachers, especially in STEM, stemming the issue. Necessitating the empowering, encouraging and enabling of more female teachers in the education industry will create more Female role models to look up to and can abate this issue.

Time flowed through as our discussions grew deeper and vined into many other avenues — impacts of gender disparities in confidence; importance of leadership skills in SDG#5; connection and cultivation of self-love/respect/dignity; acceptance of feelings, vulnerability, and grief etc.

To the length of the entire session, Mr. Asif Uddin Ahmed paved the light with his invaluable insights and ideas. He is a man of words entrusted with great values and respect for women – A divine light of change in the darkness of toxic patriarchy. Asif is a legendary leader who not only makes the nation proud but makes the entire globe proud! We need more Asifs to make the world a better place.

Thank you so much Asif Bhai for being who you are!

#empower #encourage #enable #Boldandbecoming #AsifUAAhmed #ULAB #womenempowerment