I'm Hera Hussainحرا حسین ۔

I like writing about gender-based violence, feminism, leadership, technology (especially tech for good), racism, organisational design and Urdu poetry.

I grew up in Pakistan, and now live in the UK. I started my career working in tech startups and volunteering for social entrepreneurs. From there, I transitioned into advocacy and policy work in the field of government transparency and open data. I spent 6 years training investigative journalists looking into corruption and money laundering, and talking to goverments about opening up public spending.

I started Chayn in 2013, a global nonprofit that creates resources on the web to address gender-based violence. Chayn works with, not for survivors of abuse. I ran this community as a volunteer until summer of 2020.

I believe in using the power of open source technology, trauma-informed design and hope-filled framing to solve the world's pressing issues. I've been fortunate enough to be recognised for my work - I was on the Forbes 30 Under 30 and MIT Technology Review’s Innovators Under 35 list.

You'll find my writing to be open and raw. I've found writing really hard most of my career so to make it easier for myself, I tend not to check typos or other errors in blog. I tend to publish first and edit later so I don't procastinate.

p.s. I have a cat and a dog. You'll be seeing a lot of them.