"I want to be part of a community of ambitious, strong, and smart women"
In Kyrgyzstan, Ainura Sagyn has created the Tazar app, bringing together waste producers and recyclers; established the women’s online magazine sheisnomad.com, and set up coding training programs for young women. Ainura won the inDriver Award for creating a sustainable business and making a significant contribution to the development of the women’s community in Central Asia.
Ainura Sagyn's Principles
I have the opportunity to impact the recycling and environmental sector in Kyrgyzstan, Central Asia. It’s within my power to address the garbage problem by teaching environmentally conscious behavior. Over time, we will introduce robotic systems capable of identifying different types of waste for sorting at waste processing facilities and further recycling. This is going to be an important innovation — and that inspires me. Currently in Kyrgyzstan, all waste products are sorted by humans.
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I want to be part of a community of ambitious, strong, and smart women. They are heading in the same direction as me. They have submitted 116 applications for the Aurora Tech Award. Each of them is a superstar in their industry, region, country, or university. You can learn a lot from each of them. There is this saying that goes like this, "Tech is always changing, but if you have a network that helps you change with it, you’re set."
Performance at a new level across a wide variety of companies is a result of these awards for women. Participants can develop new skills and new contacts for future success. The most important thing is to show that startups founded by women from Central Asia or any Russian-speaking country can bring positive change.
About discrimination
You have to get married early, before you reach the age of 23 — in Talas, a small town in northern Kyrgyzstan where I grew up, this is a common belief shared by most girls. By now I could have been a housewife with four or five children. Many local girls have to fight tooth and nail for every opportunity to study and work. Many of them don’t have a computer at home or at school. Which means they have far fewer opportunities to become a software programmer or an IT entrepreneur. So it wasn’t easy for me, a girl who was interested in IT. Still in some regions, technology is one of the boldest ambitions to be adopted.
I have seen with my own eyes how technology can make life better and bring people together. Among other things, it is able to overcome gender stereotypes. For work and study, I have travelled to many countries, conferences and universities in Europe, Asia, and the Silicon Valley.
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