Pathfinder CITADEL has announced Dr Sonia Saleem, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Socio Engineering Technologies and Board Member at PASHA, as a keynote speaker for Women in Tech Islamabad, scheduled for Wednesday, June 3, 2026, from 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM. The event is invite-based with limited seating, and those interested in attending can register their interest through the official RSVP link. Dr Sonia Saleem’s addition to the programme as a keynote speaker brings a voice shaped by direct experience building and leading a technology company in Pakistan, contributing to national technology policy through her board role at PASHA, and driving initiatives at the intersection of education technology, artificial intelligence, and digital skills development.
Dr Sonia Saleem’s professional profile spans the full range of dimensions that the Women in Tech Islamabad event is designed to address. As the founder and chief executive of Socio Engineering Technologies, she has navigated the specific challenges of building a technology company in Pakistan’s market as a woman entrepreneur, giving her a firsthand perspective on the barriers, opportunities, and decisions that shape the journeys of women building in the technology sector. Her board membership at PASHA, Pakistan’s Software Houses Association, connects her to the policy and industry advocacy layer of Pakistan’s technology ecosystem, where the rules, frameworks, and institutional conditions that determine how the sector develops are actively shaped through collective engagement between industry and government.
Her expertise in EdTech and digital skills development is particularly relevant in the current moment, when Pakistan’s technology sector is confronting the dual challenge of building a pipeline of trained technology talent large enough to meet growing domestic and international demand while simultaneously ensuring that the benefits of digital economic participation are distributed more equitably across gender, geography, and socioeconomic lines. The employability and inclusive growth dimensions of her work reflect a recognition that technology’s transformative potential is only realised when the people it is meant to serve can actually access the skills and opportunities it creates, a conviction that gives her perspective on artificial intelligence and digital transformation a social and economic depth that goes beyond purely technical or commercial framing.
Pathfinder CITADEL’s Women in Tech Islamabad event is designed as a curated, intimate gathering rather than a large-format conference, with the keynote and networking format intended to create conditions for the kind of substantive, direct engagement between speakers and attendees that larger events rarely allow. For women professionals in technology, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, startups, the public sector, and development organisations who are invited to attend, the combination of Dr Sonia Saleem’s keynote with the broader networking programme offers an evening that connects practical inspiration with the relationship-building opportunities that are among the most enduring sources of value any professional event can deliver. The June 3 gathering in Islamabad represents one of the more deliberately designed spaces in Pakistan’s technology calendar for women in the sector to connect, exchange, and build the community that sustains long-term professional growth.
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