Ruzwana Bashir’s successful travel tech start-up has established her place at the heart of Silicon Valley innovation. Top investors like Google’s Eric Schmidt and Square’s Jack Dorsey back Bashir’s Peek.com.
Yet her glamorous lifestyle piloting the award-winning travel site is far from her roots in an insular British South Asian community – and a terrible secret of abuse kept hidden until recently.
Ruzwana Bashir Felt Out of Place Growing Up
Bashir, who grew up wearing a long shalwar kameez and a traditional headscarf, enrolled at Oxford University and found herself surrounded by classmates in jeans, t-shirts and sneakers.
“I was very different from others around me when it came to my race, gender, and class,” Bashir recalls.
But these feelings of alienation did not dishearten Bashir. Rather, they motivated her to work even harder and not compromise her vision.
“Growing up the way I did gave me empathy and understanding for different walks of life,” she contends. “It inspired me to choose the kind of company I want to build.”
Peek.com Launches Bashir into the Spotlight
After a stint at Harvard Business School on a Fulbright scholarship, Bashir founded Peek. The online marketplace allows prospective travelers to book a wide range of activities in practically any place in the world.
Whether that’s riding in a gondola in Venice, Italy, or sky-diving in New Zealand, anyone with a smart phone can easily book the activity they are seeking through Peek’s user-friendly interface.
Peek has been hailed by CNBC as the “OpenTable for activities”. Bashir has received several honors, including Forbes’ 30 Under 30 in Technology and Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People. She joined a small group of tech titans like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman on a retreat in Italy.
“What I went through growing up prepared me well for entrepreneurship,” she believes. “I had to fight for a lot of things and I developed a grit that has really paid off.”
Ruzwana Bashir’s Childhood Prepared Her to Fight Her Battles
The extent of Bashir’s struggle became clearer went she finally went public with her story of surviving sexual abuse. When she was just ten years old, a neighbor began raping her. Paralyzed by shame and fear, Bashir said nothing.
“It was only after a decade away that I was finally able to garner the courage to return and testify against my abuser,” she explains. “When I first told my mother about the abuse I’d suffered, she was absolutely devastated. The root of her anger was clear: I was heaping unbound shame onto my family by trying to bring the perpetrator to justice.”
While Bashir wanted to stop her abuser from exploiting more children, her family begged her not to lodge a formal complaint. “My parents didn’t want me to name my abuser,” she says. But Bashir persisted and went to the police anyway. After another survivor came forward, the abuser went to jail.
“I am and always will be proud of my Pakistani heritage,” says Bashir. “But I firmly believe community leaders must take responsibility for the fact that the taboos that prevent others from identifying perpetrators and supporting victims enable further abuse. And those taboos must be challenged.”
Now Bashir divides her time between the high-tech Silicon Valley scene and direct public service helping victims of abuse.
“In the words of Edmund Burke, ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing,’” she concludes. “Let’s not be those people.”
