Life Desk :
Subah Saiyara Mahbub is a 12th grade high school student in Queens, New York. She moved to New York from Bangladesh in June, 2019 to study abroad. Although Subah lives in New York, her home country has always remained in her heart and she has dedicatedly worked hard to make her country proud. Within a very short period of time, Subah has achieved several international milestones.
Her passion for women empowerment and engineering has motivated her to be an exemplary advocate in these fields. She currently serves as 2 times elected lead of the Girl Up New York City Coalition. Girl Up is a United Nations Foundation Movement aimed to empower and unite girls globally. Subah oversees hundreds of Girl Up members in New York and regularly has meetings with New York senators and representatives to promote gender equality. Her team’s contribution to improving women’s health products have been highlighted on the social media pages of New York Senator Roxanne Persaud. Subah currently serves as a 2021-22 Girl Up Teen Advisor. This is a prestigious recognition as Subah is one of the only 25 girls out of more than 600 global applicants who have been chosen as a global Girl Up Advisor. Subah also planned and executed the spread of the Girl Up movement to Bangladesh, successfully establishing the Girl Up Bangladesh Coalition with the help of youth leader Liyana Eshaal. Currently, Subah and other Girl Up leaders in Bangladesh are training girls in the Dhaka region to be successful Girl Up leaders in their communities. For her dedication towards the global community, Subah was awarded the US President’s Volunteer Service (Gold) Award. She also received a recognition letter of her contribution from American President Joe Biden with a gold lapel pin.
Apart from Girl Up, Subah founded her student-led organization, “Future STEM Leaders”, which focuses on decreasing opportunity gaps in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) field for underprivileged communities and minority groups. Subah and her team are fundraising to donate school and STEM supplies to underprivileged communities in Haiti, and Ecuador impacting more than 350 children. She often interviews minority voices in the STEM field to promote more STEM inclusivity. In this brief period of time, Subah has also managed to research under Stanford and New York University Research Programs for Environmental and Mechanical Engineering. She hopes to apply the research knowledge she acquires to solve Bangladesh’s water scarcity issues.
Subah is determined to give back to her mother country, and she is focused to reach her goals in order to add her positive contribution for our country’s bright future.
