Leena is a woman of many hats – a proud mother of three children, a wife, a nuclear engineer, an insurance professional, and a community leaderLeena was a pioneer in many areas. A physics and mathematics graduate from SUNY Albany, she earned a Masters in Nuclear Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York in 1979, the first woman of Bangladesh origin to do so. Her nearly 20-yr engineering career spanned nuclear power industry, the US Air Force Weapons Lab in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and oil industry consultation. At Air Force Lab, she organized the First Women Professionals Conference in the Air Force.Leena has always been passionate about women’s and family issues. While raising her children, she recognized the unique challenges Bangladeshi women and their families face in a new society, with the children often navigating between two cultures. So in 1998, with support from Bangladeshi women in Southern California, she founded the Bangladesh Women’s Organization of California (BWOC) to provide a forum on the issues and help them bridge that gap. She ran it for nearly 10 years till she moved to the Bay Area.

Wahida has been working as an environmentalist and an urban planner for the California Department of Transportation for the past sixteen years. She got a Bachelor's degree in Architecture from B.U.E.T. Bangladesh and a Master's degree in Architecture and Urban Planning from UC Berkekey, California.Wahida believes, that women are the focal point of a family, community, society, institutions or organizations; therefore, empowering women contributes to the betterment of families and communities. Wahida being of Bangladeshi origin wants to participate in the process of helping and empowering Bangladeshi women in the greater Bay Area.Wahida is an artist and a singer. She is also involved in community building and affiliated with many Bay Area philanthropic organizations. She is a promoter/activists of minority rights and women’s rights at work and in her community.

Nuzhat has been working at Bank of America for 25 years and is currently a Delivery Lead.She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics with a minor in Computer Science from California State University, East Bay.‘Women empowering other women’ is a value that Nuzhat identifies with and is the reason for joining BWEN. Nuzhat raised two daughters that she hopes will become independent, thoughtful and courageous leaders in the careers they choose. She believes that spreading awareness of various philanthropic, humanitarian, cultural, and educational activities to other women in our community is the best way to engage and develop our daughters into future leaders. She is excited by the overwhelming support that BWEN has already received, and looks forward to the contribution it can make to the women of our community.In her spare time, Nuzhat likes to spend time with family and friends, cooking and traveling.

Mita is an experienced Software Project and Program Manager who worked in the Bay Area for 36 years. She started as a Scientific Programmer at Molecular Design Limited (Biovia) and became an Engineering Manager delivering multiple releases of 2 core products. She then worked at OSISoft, LLC (Aveeva) as an Engineering Project Manager and then as a Project Manager working on very visible and challenging projects in both Customer Services and Support and IT. After that, she was the Program Manager for a companywide digital transformation at CEB that was required to support the launch of the CEB Legal Platform in 2019, a major milestone in CEB’s 72-year history. In her final position she worked as a Technical Project Manager in the Legal Operations team at Gilead Sciences. Here she was responsible for integrating their CLM with SAP and Ariba, integrating TeamConnect ELM with SAP and a Data Analytics project for the Procurement team as part of a massive companywide initiative. She earned a PhD in Computational Chemistry from the University of Georgia. She loves to sing and enjoys gardening and spending quality time with family and friends.She has always wanted to give back to the community and recently joined SV Bangladeshi Women in STEM, SpaandanB and BWEN. At SpaandanB, she has been teaching the kids in classes 4-10 how to become fluent in spoken English as part of their Distance Learning initiative. She has a daughter who is an accomplished Technical Lead in software development and a very compassionate person