Tania Aidrus was working with US tech giant Google in Singapore when she was approached by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf leader Jahangir Khan Tareen last year to lead Prime Minister Imran Khan’s "Digital Pakistan" initiative.
She spent more than half her life outside Pakistan, studying at the world's best schools and working at the forefront of the global tech industry.
Impressed by the prime minister’s vision to transform the country’s digital landscape, Aidrus agreed to head the project and returned to Pakistan after 20 years.
She was inducted into the Federal Cabinet earlier this year as special assistant to the prime minister, however, her exit today from the PM House was very unceremonious. She was told to resign after media reports that she has established an NGO sparking a debate on conflict of interest.
Tania Aidrus, a former Chief of Staff and Head of Strategic Initiatives on the Next Billion Users (NBU) team at Google, quit her position last year to "put Pakistan on the map" as far as technology and innovation were concerned.
Tania holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management and a BSc from Brandeis University. Prior to her appointment as a Google executive, Tania co-founded a mobile health diagnosis company called ClickDiagnostics which connected rural patients in emerging markets to doctors around the world.
She was also a leader in the Global Business Organization at Google in the US and then in Singapore where she was the Country Manager for South Asia Frontier Markets at Google.
