Roshanay Asif Sheikh

Roshanay Asif Sheikh runs rooms for a living and has done since she was a student — the first Model United Nations at her institute, a TEDx licensed in her own name, a concert, a film premiere with its cast in the seats, and Dastaan-e-Ishq with Umair Jaliawala on the stage.

She took over her family's manufacturing business in 2017 as Director at Raja Industries, running production, marketing and R&D. Alongside it she started a coworking space for twenty people and grew it into the largest in Sialkot, with a hundred freelancers and start-ups in it and an official partnership with the Punjab Information Technology Board's Eearn programme, which subsidises seventy per cent of a freelancer's seat.

In 2019 she opened the Sialkot chapter of Startup Grind, the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs' community, and still directs it. She has co-founded two social organisations — Azaad Pakistan and WeGrow — and the first thing she ever organised, in 2013, was a protest.

With Torque she hosts and facilitates, and trains on the ground she has actually stood on: freelancing, growth mindset, and starting something of your own.