Fatima Asad-Said, Chief Executive Officer and Board Member at Abacus, has announced her candidacy for one of the two reserved seats for women entrepreneurs on the PASHA Central Executive Committee for the 2026 to 2028 term. Asad-Said brings more than twenty-six years of experience across technology leadership, corporate governance and human capital management, and has framed her candidacy around building an inclusive, innovation driven future for Pakistan’s IT industry that is shaped directly by women entrepreneurs.
Her manifesto opens with a commitment to championing women’s leadership, proposing to launch a structured mentorship and board readiness track within PASHA that would pair senior women executives with rising entrepreneurs, working toward a target of onboarding at least thirty women into the program within a year. On digital transformation, she wants to apply two decades of enterprise technology and artificial intelligence experience to help member companies navigate the draft National Data Governance Policy 2026, pushing for compliance clarity and workable data residency rules so exporters are not caught between government requirements and international client contracts.
Read: PASHA CEC Elections 2026: Every Candidate Contesting
The remaining three points of her platform address governance, talent retention and export growth. Asad-Said wants to bring corporate governance rigor to the Central Executive Committee, working alongside fellow members to push for a permanent legal framework covering the IT and ITeS tax concession rather than one dependent on periodic renewal, along with full bank level implementation of the State Bank’s recent export processing reforms and stronger connectivity resilience for the sector. On talent, she wants to share diversity, equity and inclusion frameworks that have already earned global Best Practice Awards as a practical playbook for member companies, aimed at addressing the brain drain pressure that connectivity disruptions and other structural issues place on experienced engineers each year. Her final commitment centers on elevating Pakistan’s IT exports by building on PASHA’s growing delegation efforts to help members diversify beyond traditional markets into underused opportunities across the GCC and ASEAN regions, while amplifying the industry’s voice in ongoing conversations with regulators on export enabling reforms.
Asad-Said’s candidacy comes as PASHA prepares to fill its two reserved seats for women entrepreneurs on September 18, 2026, through an election in which the newly elected Central Executive Committee will serve as the electoral college, a day after the general election for the ten open seats on September 17, 2026. Based on the Election Commission’s regional structure, voting is expected to be coordinated across Islamabad and Rawalpindi, Lahore, and Karachi, where PASHA maintains its secretariat and regional offices. The complete final voters list for the 2026 elections is available on the PASHA final voter list, and more information about Asad-Said’s professional background can be found on her LinkedIn profile.
CWPakistan is profiling every candidate contesting the 2026 PASHA CEC elections. Profiles are drawn from published campaign material by PASHA Election Commission.
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