BAGA Announces 2015 Community Leadership Award

NGO News Report :: Bangladesh Association of Greater Austin (BAGA) is proud to announce Lima Islam, Rabiul Islam and Sultan Ahmed as the recipients of this year’s Community Leadership Award for their remarkable dedication and unconditional support for Bangladeshi community in Austin and BAGA. We are truly honored to have such dedicated individuals in our community. Brief bios of the recipients are below:

Lima Islam
Lima Islam is a Financial Service professional at University Federal Credit Union (UFCU) Austin Texas, at her present capacity; she is engaged in the different business development programs at UFCU. Prior to Joining UFCU, Lima worked at Capital One & Apple in a different capacity. She graduated from University of Texas (UT) at Austin in Economics with Business Foundation. She completed her Secondary School Certificate (SSC) and Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) in Dhaka, Bangladesh from Holy Cross School and College.

Lima is involved in various social, cultural, voluntary and charity activities with BAGA. She also volunteered for other non-profit organization like Meals on Wheels, March of Dimes, and American Cancer Society etc. Lima is also involved with Cedar Park Chamber of Commerce and Rotary International. Among her hobbies, she enjoys teaching Indian dance to Second generations’ Bangladeshi kids in Austin for various community programs. Every year Lima choreographed dances for different BAGA events, many of her students grown up and teaching other kids and performing their own dance today. Lima lives in Austin with her husband Dr. Saiful Islam Niton and their son Niraf.

Dr. Rabiul Islam
Rabiul Islam is a Technical Management professional at TSMC where he led efforts in power reduction schemes, power management and process-design co-optimization for various micro-processor chips. Rabiul has twelve U.S and international patents by him and over forty-five technical papers in refereed Journals and Conferences. Rabiul received his Ph. D. and Master degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. He obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET). He served as a lecturer in the department of Electrical Engineering of BUET.

During his spare times, Rabiul pursues his passion for filming and photography. He is the US representative of the satellite television channel NTV based in Bangladesh. Besides NTV, Rabiul served as BOD for BAGA several times including one time as Vice Chair. Rabiul dedicated good amount of his spare time to make BAGA Pohela Boisakh successful every year by writing, directing Drama for our community. Rabiul Lives with his wife Shaylee and their daughter Rafya and their son Sabiq.

Sultan Ahmed
Sultan Ahmed has an illustrious career in technology and community services. He is a Senior Software Architect and developer at Pragma Systems in Austin. His Fortress SSH client software is used worldwide and is highly praised by the likes of Cisco, US DoD and HSBC bank. He graduated Summa Cum Laude from Brandeis University with B.A. in Computer Science and was a Wien Scholar. In 1980 he stood first in HSC in Dhaka Board and was 6th in SSC from the same board. Prior to Pragma, he worked at Vignette and Tandem Computers in Austin and several other software companies in Boston high-tech area.

He is very supportive and active of the community he lives in and has been instrumental in helping BAGA for picnics, event planning, web site development for many years. He also volunteered to lead new web site development of Bangladesh embassy in Washington D.C. and built a nice site for them at no cost. Sultan served in BAGA two terms including Ad-hoc committee. He is an avid photographer and made many people, families and our BAGA community very pleased with taking great photos and then editing and posting them. Sultan lives in Austin with his wife Putul and two daughters Sarika and Tanisha

Please join us in congratulating Lima Islam, Rabiul Islam & Sultan Ahmed for their outstanding achievement and contribution and dedication to BAGA. BAGA will present the award to them in its annual celebration of “Bengali New Year Festival 2015” on Saturday April 18, 2015 at Fiesta Gardens.