Favorite Quote: “And I cried… for all of the women who stretched their bodies for civilizations, only to find ruins” Sonia Sanchez-.

An aspiring journalist and policy expert who has worked for the governments of Pakistan and the UK, Areej’s activism gravitates towards the issues of women and transgender community as well as the rights of children. She has centered her research on the rights of women prisoners and the issue of child abuse in Pakistan. In 2016, she set up an initiative called Dairah to provide a platform to the transgender communities in Islamabad, to engage in constructive dialogue with the public. She pursued a Master’s of Public Policy at the University of Oxford where she learnt how countries around the world could make their laws more inclusive for all genders. Areej is currently working on filming her first documentary, teaches labor policy at her alma mater and works fulltime at WWF, focusing on environment and climate justice. She is also involved in organizing grassroots feminist activism in Pakistan and hopes to find and tell stories of women who have changed lives, broken barriers and made a mark on the world around them. Areej is fluent in English, Urdu, and Punjabi.