Farhana Huq, Founder and CEO, CEO Women
Moved by a personal family story of entrepreneurship, statistics on women in business and the poverty she saw on a trip to Bangladesh — her father’s country, Farhana Huq visualized and built an organization that empowers low-income immigrant and refugee women to become entrepreneurs.
According to the organization’s website:
“The mission of C.E.O. Women is to create economic opportunities for low-income immigrant and refugee women through teaching English, communications and entrepreneurship skills, so they can establish successful livelihoods. C.E.O. Women then provides women with intensive mentoring, coaching and access to capital needed to start a small business.”
Creating Economic Opportunities (C.E.O.) Women currently serves the Bay Area. The organization most recently launched a dynamic new educational video series called Grand Cafe, which teaches immigrant women English language skills specifically useful when building a business. Farhana says that the series enables C.E.O. Women to offer the organization’s services beyond Northern California.
Presented like “telenovelas,” the entertaining and educational Grand Cafe teaches English words related to entrepreneurship through the story of four friends from diverse backgrounds. The program is unique in that it doesn’t matter whether the woman’s native language is Spanish, Chinese or any other language.
Farhana founded C.E.O. Women in 2000, after being inspired by the enterprise revolution in her father’s native Bangladesh and by the struggles that poor, single women in her own family faced to become self-sufficient. She was also elected to the Ashoka Fellowship, the most prestigious fellowship for leading social entrepreneurs around the world.
BusinessBoomer interviewed Farhana at her home in Oakland, Calif.
Learn more about how she built the organization and the impact of her programs by clicking on the videos below:
What is C.E.O. Women?
How did C.E.O. Women get started?
Where does C.E.O. Women serve its community?
How do you measure the impact of C.E.O. Women?
What was the turning point that enabled C.E.O. Women to grow into the organization it is today?
What is the C.E.O. Women Grand Cafe telenovela video series?
