2021 Leadership Journey Project: Leveraging smartphone technology as tools of resilience for women & girls in Myanmar
Pwint is in the midst of mobilizing a digital literacy campaign targeted for women and marginalized population. Her work is at the intersection between women economic empowerment, accelerating women digital finance adoption, addressing digital cash transfer directly to women to reduct childhood stunting.
Pwint is instrumental in building the Mobile Financial Services industry for Myanmar. She is instrumental in shaping policies of Myanmar’s telecommunications reforms when Myanmar was the third least connected country in the world. She worked to influence policy changes by working closely with the President’s Office, the Central Bank of Myanmar and Ministry of Communications and IT. She has trained parliamentarians from both upper house and lower house.
Pwint’s life and career focus shifted after a trip to East Africa where she noticed that those living in rural areas, used a mobile phone-based money transfer and financial service called M-Pesa. Following this revelation, Pwint left her corporate career to tackle a new mission – to connect parts of her homeland to the rest of Myanmar and the world, providing for greater “financial inclusion,” or universal access to financial services.
Pwint held various senior management roles at US-based telecommunications and IT companies. She has a BS in Electrical Engineering from University of Washington, a Masters of Engineering Management from Northwestern University. She was a nonresident fellow at Harvard University Kennedy School of Government.
