A Long Conversation
With Humanity

Zarin's first roles ran in parallel — teaching MBA students at Independent University Bangladesh by day, and advising SNV on national communication strategy and media campaigns by evening, including work later expanded through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Who knew one of my biggest lessons would come from human waste? Working on Faecal Sludge and Septage Management, I met drain cleaners, Dalit communities, and visited Manila to see how human sludge becomes fertilizer and energy.

An office retreat became an earthquake. At a place called The Last Resort, life reminded me how quickly certainty disappears. Later that year, she was awarded a 50% scholarship to Harvard Business School's CSR & Social Enterprise Program — the first formal bridge between her development work and business strategy.

I listened to Rohingya women speak about loss, survival, and hope. Their stories taught me that people are often stronger than the stories told about them.

I carried stories from Bangladesh across borders. Different languages. Different cultures. Yet many women carried the same fears, dreams, and barriers.

COVID-19 revealed something no textbook ever could — fear and courage can exist in the same heart. While advocating for children's mental wellbeing at World Vision, I realised emotional health deserves as much attention as academic success. Alongside that advocacy, she served as Gender Equality Advisor to the Canadian High Commission in Dhaka, providing technical guidance across four bilateral GBV-focused projects and helping shape donor policy under Canada's feminist aid framework.

A second faculty chapter — this time in ULAB's MBA program, weaving mindfulness, sound therapy, and social conditioning awareness into courses on business communication and international business.

Zarin founded MajhaMajhi as a platform for honest conversations about mental health, identity, relationships, and the experiences people often carry quietly. It brings together storytelling, public dialogue, creative practice, and community care — creating spaces where people can feel seen without being reduced to a diagnosis or a label.

Through Mon Utsob, mental health moved into a public cultural space. The festival brought together conversation, reflection, art, and lived experience — making wellbeing something people could approach collectively rather than privately or with shame.

After months of political unrest, I sat with students carrying grief, anger, and uncertainty. I wasn't there to give answers. I was there to create space.

I worked with humanitarian responders supporting survivors of gender-based violence in the Rohingya response. They spend their days carrying other people's pain. For two days, we focused on carrying their own. That same year, Dear Shadow, I See You — Bangladesh's first interactive mental health workbook — was published, turning fifteen years of field lessons into thirteen chapters anyone could sit with at home.

Dear Shadow, I See You grew from Zarin's years of listening to the thoughts people often hide from others — and sometimes from themselves. The interactive book invites readers to pause, write, reflect, and meet difficult emotions with curiosity rather than judgment.

Nine out of every ten children in Bangladesh face some form of violence — even inside their own homes. That statistic sat at the center of a two-day psychosocial care training Zarin led for 33 Khulna Metropolitan Police officers, organized by World Vision Bangladesh through its Child Voice and Action advocacy groups. The training gave frontline officers the empathy and psychosocial tools to better support victims of violence — child-friendly practices, positive communication, and how to actually listen.