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Sadia Bashir is a Pakistani female digital entrepreneur. She is the founder and CEO of PixelArt Game Academy (PGA), Pakistan's first video game development academy. Her aim is to encourage women to join the industry.

Background
It is an unfortunate fact that in developing countries like Pakistan, most of the women while pursuing education and careers face lots of barriers. For instance, Patriarchal values are deeply embedded in Pakistani society and its diverse manifestations are discerned in different aspects of society. Most of the families still find it useless to educate their female children. So, in Pakistani society, if any female wants to get higher education and want to pursue her passion, she has to fight for that not only at home but at every place. She has to strive hard to prove herself. Unfortunately, Bashir also faced some of these barriers, but she never lost hope and fought for her passion.

Due to financial constraints, her family refused her to get a higher education, Bashir did not lose hope at that time because she was passionate about animations and video games. So, she started some part time work like sewing, teaching, etc. to fund her education. She managed to pursue her studies at the COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, from where she completed her bachelor's and master's in Computer Science with distinction from HEC in her bachelor's.

Career
Since childhood, Bashir was passionate about video games. During her studies, she got deeply influenced by computer graphic interface CGI. After completing her education, She pursued her career in the game industry for 8 years as an artist and a game designer. She also worked with Keychain Films as an artist and used to create documentaries and animation work. Bashir also got the opportunity to work with various international giants like Big Fish Games, Wild Tangent, G5, and Game House. She also worked with a famous game studio in Pakistan, we.R.play. Bashir also worked with international mentors from RockYou and Kiwi Games.

PixelArt Game Academy (PGA)
After working and understanding the male dominating gaming industry, In her interview, she accepted the reality that in Pakistan, no centers are specializing in video game development. She was aware of difficulties and lack of mentoring in the game industry for new game developers, especially women. Bashir then conducted research on video game development as a part of her educational degree. And she came with the idea of an academy for inspiring video game developers. Soon, she founded the PixlArt GamesAcademy (PGA) along with her brother-in-law Umair.

She took a start at the WECREATE Center and start working on her business model under the supervision of several mentors and experts. They assisted her to launch the PGA successfully. Currently, The PGA is a team of five members from diverse backgrounds. They provide training sessions and design workshops on video game development and design. With the support of many international mentors Levine, Jon Chey, and Brie Code, the PGA is delivering international standard education and training to its students.

Being a vocal women empowerment advocate, Bashir took a stand for the Pakistani females and gives them a message of dedication and hard work through her struggles and initiative of PixelArt Academy.

Achievements

 * Bashir represented Pakistan Game Industry internationally on many platforms.
 * She was invited as a speaker at Game Developer’s Conference (GDC) in San Francisco and GameLab at American University, Washington DC, USA.
 * In 2018, She has also been listed in Forbes 30 Under 30 Enterprise Technology in Asia.
 * Bashir has also organized multiple international events & games jam in Pakistan. Games Emerge Conference in Pakistan is one of her popular initiatives.
 * In 2016, Bashir was awarded the "Women Can Do" award at the U.S. Embassy at the Women Entrepreneurs Summit.