Rangina Hamidi

As founder and president of Kandahar Treasure, the first women’s private enterprise in Kandahar, Rangina Hamidi provides economic opportunities for 400 Afghan women to improve their own lives through traditional embroidery work. Ms. Hamidi believes that women are crucial to the peace process in Afghanistan, “but without economic independence,” she says, “Women have no power to talk to warlords, extremists, or politicians.” Ms. Hamidi escaped her native Afghanistan in 1981, at the age of four, during the Soviet occupation. She moved first to Pakistan and then, in 1988, to the United States. Settling with her family in Virginia, she earned a bachelor’s degree in 2000 in religious and gender studies from the University of Virginia. She spent the years 2003-2011 living and working in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Rangina has been internationally recognized for her work with women, selected as one of 18 finalists for the CNN 2007 Hero Award, and chosen as a “Personality of the Week” by Radio Free Europe in January 2008.