Nancy Hoque on the '40 under 40' list
"Throughout her career, Hoque has found a way to make room for her aspirations," writes the Silicon Valley Business Journal about Nancy Hoque.
This year Nancy Hoque, of Bangladesh origin, appears on the influential journal's '40 under 40' list of executives, entrepreneurs and professionals.
Engineer, entrepreneur and manager
Nancy Hoque was born to Bangladeshi parents in Los Angeles, USA, where she grew up and went to school. Yet she speaks Bangla with comparative ease. "It is because of my parents that I speak Bangla. They made sure I practiced the language."
She lives in San Francisco now. She was speaking over the phone on 6 October and it was night where she was. "I'm still working from home because of Covid," she said, "All tech firms here are operating this way now. Our company bears the costs of furniture and equipment so we can work at home like we do in office."
Nancy works for the world-famous software manufacturing company Adobe. She is the manager of Strategy and Operations there. She deals with global business for Adobe Digital Experience (DX) including Photoshop, Illustrator and PDF, Premier.
She wasn't involved with management at the start of her career. She started off as an engineer. She graduated in electrical engineering from the University of California, San Diego and did her Masters in the same subject at San Diego State University. She then did her MBA from UC Berkeley Haas School of Business.
She began her career at Motorola. "I would make radio systems for military use." After working there for around 9 years, she moved on to Adobe after a stint at OpenInvest and then Symantec. She's been there for a year and three months.
She even had a startup, designing head scarves. "The scarves had beautiful designs and in six months I entered markets in 20 countries," said Nancy.
Why the shift from engineering to management? "I want to reach a leadership position in management," she said. "Adobe is a tech company, so I am not really too far from engineering. The engineering world is still ruled by men. There are hardly any women at policymaking levels in these companies. I want to change that."
Alongside her professional identity at Adobe, Nancy Hoque is also the co-founder of the non-profit initiative, The Pursuit, Global Women for Change. This is an initiative to unite women change-makers around the world. They share their views with each other. Nancy is involved in various such initiatives for which she has received recognition and awards. These include the Berkeley-Haas Leadership Scholar 2018, G20 Young Global Changer Ambassador 2020 and Leadership California 2020.
My parents came to this country as immigrants and built up our life here, which was not easy at all. They struggled hard to bring us to this position. That is why I am most inspired by them.Nancy Hoque
Scope of technology to expand
Speaking about the world of technology, Nancy said, "I feel the use of technology will increase significantly. Transactions on sites like Amazon have increased manifold. This will continue to increase. The market for online streaming videos will increase too. All sorts of virtual work will increase. The world will take up technology immensely."
Parents are her inspiration
Nancy's mother Shahida Hossain and father Tofazzal Hossain immigrated to the US in 1981. Two years later, on 9 May 1983, Nancy was born. Her younger brother is an engineer at Tesla.
Nancy's family comes from Cumilla in Bangladesh. They visit Bangladesh occasionally. She has married a Bangladeshi too, Ehsan Hoque. He is the product manager of Amazon's Prime Video. They have two sons - Akira Hoque (11) and Raidan Hoque (9). They both enjoy skiing and so does Nancy. They spend a lot of their winters in the mountains.
Nancy says her parents are her inspiration in life and work. "My parents came to this country as immigrants and built up our life here, which was not easy at all. They struggled hard to bring us to this position. That is why I am most inspired by them."
Nancy is reading 'The Truths We Hold', by Kamala Harrison, the Democrat vice presidential candidate. She says that inspires her too. "It is quite an achievement to come this far with an Indian mother and a black father," she says, "That is why I am inspired."
Nancy has a vision of increased women's leadership in the business world, of women occupying top positions in politics. She is working on building up this global network of women too.