Goalmakers 2020 National Forum Washington

Tazin Shadid, A social entrepreneur and Human Centered Design practitioner, has become the first Bangladeshi to win the prestigious Global Hero Award at Goalmakers 2020 National Forum.
The award, which began since 2011 by Global Washington, is a lifetime achievement award that recognizes those individuals within the global development community in Washington State who have made significant contributions towards improving lives in developing countries. This year, Tazin Shadid joins the group of nine past Global Hero Winners, as the first Bangladeshi. Other notable winners of this esteemed award have included Bill Gates Sr., co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Akhtar Badshah, Former Senior Director, Microsoft, Patrick Awuah, founder and president of Ashesi University in Ghana, and Bill Neukom, founder of The World Justice Project.
Tazin was chosen as this year’s Global Hero by Global Washington for his outstanding contribution and commitment in the social development sector as Founder and CEO of Spreeha Bangladesh, a Bangladesh based social enterprise. Inspired by the culture of innovation, Tazin is on a mission to build a world that nurtures limitless opportunities for all.
As a Human Centered Design practitioner for almost 20 years, Tazin Shadid spent 10 years at Microsoft headquarters as a Senior Design Strategist, where he helped develop innovative products and services to bring value to the users. During that time, he founded Spreeha Foundation, a USA based non-profit organization that focuses on breaking the cycle of poverty. Later, Tazin founded Spreeha Bangladesh, a social enterprise with a vision to design creative solutions to some of the toughest issues of our times. In 2015, he left Microsoft to return to his homeland and commit full time to the mission of Spreeha Bangladesh.
Today, Tazin Shadid is spearheading Spreeha Bangladesh, which provides health care, education and employment-based skills training services to the underserved communities in Bangladesh. Spreeha has also created self-sustaining social ventures that addresses evolving human needs to bring perceivable change for the better. Till date, Spreeha has touched more than 400,000 lives in almost 20 different districts across Bangladesh in the form of health, education, capacity building programs, women empowerment platforms and several disaster response initiatives.
“Our goal is to continue to design innovative services to empower individuals and communities and help them reach their full potential. By 2025, we want to inspire a million lives.”  Tazin Shadid, told newsmen.
With his dynamic entrepreneurship experience, Tazin has also co-founded multiple tech-based startups such as AmarLab, neofarmers, Spider Digital, Cholo Shobai, Druto Sheba and a couple of other initiatives as part of Covid-19 response. Talking to The Daily Star , he expressed his deepest gratitude to all the teams, partners, donors, and well-wishers for their continuous support along the journey. “The award is indeed a result of our combined efforts during these extraordinarily challenging times,” Tazin adds.
The award, which began since 2011 by Global Washington, is a lifetime achievement award that recognizes those individuals within the global development community in Washington State who have made significant contributions towards improving lives in developing countries. This year, Tazin Shadid joins the group of nine past Global Hero Winners, as the first Bangladeshi. Other notable winners of this esteemed award have included Bill Gates Sr., co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Akhtar Badshah, Former Senior Director, Microsoft, Patrick Awuah, founder and president of Ashesi University in Ghana, and Bill Neukom, founder of The World Justice Project.