Born and raised in Hong Kong, Lamia previously graduated from The University of Hong Kong (HKU) with a double major in American Studies and Criminology. Currently, she is in her final year as a Juris Doctor Candidate at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), and she is looking forward to starting a legal career in the city. Having grown up as an ethnic minority in Hong Kong with Bangladeshi roots, Lamia has experienced both the diverse yet exclusionary nature of the city and wishes to promote greater social integration.
Lamia was the President of the Equal Opportunities Student Ambassador Club at HKU. Her role focused on providing equal opportunities to all students in the university by mobilizing the support of external organizations to offer and engage in more voluntary services. Through this, she has organized and assisted in campaigns on different human rights causes. Lamia is also one of the Hong Kong Unison 2017 – 2019 awardees of the Yu Lin Hu Memorial Scholarship for Ethnic Minorities Students. As an awardee, she has been invited to numerous political conferences, workshops and schools to discuss issues surrounding ethnic minorities in Hong Kong.
A strong proponent of equal opportunities for ethnic minorities as well as women’s rights, Lamia wants to have a greater impact in creating a Hong Kong where these fundamental values are respected. Witnessing how the ethnic minorities community could not enjoy equal opportunities to receive higher education and often left with little access to professional career choices, she has been continuously involved in discussions surrounding educational policies targeting the ethnic minorities after joining the Resolve Fellowship in 2018. She has been featured by outlets such as RTHK, HK01, CNA propagating the same.
Recently, Lamia collaborated with EmpowerU to teach law to ethnic minorities students. She has also become a co-founder of Seekr, a social tech start up initiative that helps to support visually impaired people (VIP) with a personalized, interactive voice-assistive device to help live life independently. Supported by Resolve’s Opportunity Fund, she initiated focus groups with VIP to understand their daily struggles and pain points, as well as design thinking workshops with social entrepreneurs to discuss and build solutions for different social issues.
In her spare time, she likes to read, watch movies, play the guitar, or the harmonium,a classical Indian instrument similar to a piano. She also spends her time tutoring ethnic minority students preparing for tertiary examinations, and wishes to see them get into the colleges of their choice.
In Lamia’s Words:
“I believe Hong Kong will have achieved racial equality the day ethnic minorities no longer face direct and indirect forms of discrimination and we have true equality in society.”