Sarah Awan

Sarah is a social impact leader with business, non-profit, policy and advocacy experience at the intersection of gender, race and technology. She is currently engaged at CEO Action for Racial Equity pushing CEO’s and the business community to do more to end systemic racism in the United States. Sarah leads a team focused on how to narrow the Digital Divide for Black students and families addressing issues with broadband infrastructure, affordability, access and adoption. Over the last decade, Sarah has led digital innovation teams and supported philanthropic efforts at IBM, PwC Digital and Microsoft-Accenture joint venture, Avanade. Sarah’s policy and advocacy experience started with Plan International’s ‘Because I am a Girl’ campaign in 2012. The campaign raised hundreds of millions in funding, changed laws in numerous countries and, most importantly, supported millions of girls to get an education.

Sarah has a Bachelor of Commerce and Master in International Relations from Curtin University and a Master in Social Innovation from the University of Cambridge. As part of her first Masters degree, Sarah examined the role of women in Pakistani society with a case study on the narratives that led up to the shooting of Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani activist for female education and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. As part of her second Master’s degree, Sarah researched how artificial intelligence and machine learning can perpetuate gender bias. Sarah is currently a Practice Fellow at the Cambridge Center for Social Innovation. Sarah is Kashmiri-Australian and has worked in Australia, Asia, London and the United States. She is currently based in New York City.