Shabana Basij-Rasikh

Shabana Basij-Rasikh (@sbasijrasikh) is the co-founder and president of the School of Leadership, Afghanistan (SOLA). SOLA is the first and only private boarding school for girls in Afghanistan, enrolling about 80 students in grades 6-10. Born in Kabul, Shabana’s childhood was spent under the Taliban regime at a time when girls’ education was outlawed. She studied in secret until the fall of the Taliban in 2001; her experiences motivate her certainty that investing in girls’ education is a nation’s path to a prosperous future. Shabana is a magna cum laude graduate of Middlebury College in the USA and holds a Master in Public Policy from Oxford University. She is a global ambassador for Girl Rising, a worldwide campaign for girls’ education, and in 2018 she was awarded one of Afghanistan’s highest civilian honors for her work with SOLA. In 2019, Forbes named her to their 30 Under 30 Asia list as a social entrepreneur.

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