When Time magazine named Safeena Husain one of 16 Women of the Year 2026, she was standing outside at a Mumbai philanthropy conference, looking up at a sky so clear she could see the stars. “That almost never happens in Mumbai,” she told me later. “I felt so inspired.” Safeena Husain

Making the impossible visible has been Safeena’s life’s work. For two decades, she has searched for the girls in India’s most forgotten villages, the ones with names like Maafi (forgive me for having a girl) and Missed Call (we asked God for a boy, but he missed the call).

I had known I would love Safeena Husain before I even met her.

As a mother of three girls — engineers, athletes, dreamers — I’ve felt deep gratitude to the women who made those futures possible. And Safeena Husain, founder of Educate Girls, is up there with the fighters.

We meet early this year at the Jaipur Literature Festival. Sitting across from me, Safeena looks elegant in a teal blue silk sari and long navy coat. She smiled when she saw me holding Every Last Girl, the book she is there to launch.

The book is full of heartbreaking stories. But it also offers hope, with many strategies to get girls into school. One innovative approach stages village plays dramatizing the life-and-death effects of illiteracy.

Safeena speaks with intensity and clarity. We talk about her childhood reading, the process of writing her book, and the impact of winning the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award. Here are edited excerpts of our conversation.

Safeena, are you a reader? My parents divorced when I was young. My mother remarried, and my stepfather was an alcoholic. We lived in a one-room janta flat in Delhi. I was always in my own world, a girl with her nose in a book.

There used to be a mobile library outside Naoroji Nagar in Delhi that would come to our neighborhood, and I read a lot of books from there.

I read books with all sorts of titles, like Yahan Ka Vyapari, which I later realized was a translation of The Merchant of Venice. I read a lot of stuff, but I read it all in Hindi.

In Saket there was a sabzi mandi, and there was this place that rented comic books cheaply, and I read all those comic book digests—anything I could get my hands on.

You went from Hindi comic books to Nobel prize-winning Korean author Han Kang — how did that journey happen? I shifted to reading in English, which was hard at first. I began with simpler books, like the Enid Blyton and Nancy Drew series. In high school, I moved to Oscar Wilde, G.B. Shaw, etc.

Now I’m discovering many female writers—books like The Vegetarian (Han Kang) and Butter (by Asako Yuzuki) . There’s incredible writing out there, like Bunny (Mona Awad), wildly imaginative, and Sally Rooney. I love these young women with fresh voices.

And now you are the author of a book? What prompted this decision to write? I was in Oxford giving a talk when the moderator later told me, “So much has been written about you—I’ve read your articles and media reports—but nothing in your own voice.”

It struck me, because it was true. We’d done so much, but never shared our journey, thoughts, or ideas in our own voice. That planted the seed.

The hardest part was deciding how to write the book and what it should be about. That took time. Then in 2019, after a TED Talk, I visited the TED bookstore in Vancouver and saw books by TED speakers. That gave me confidence: if I could give a TED Talk, maybe I could turn it into a TED book.

What did you decide this book should be—an academic book, a memoir, or something else? That was the hardest decision. Writing about gender and education could go in a dense, academic direction—or be just a collection of stories. There were many ways to approach it.

Eventually, I realized I wanted to write a human book—one that tells the story and builds the case for girls’ education in a simple, jargon-free way. This is not a sector book or an NGO book. It’s really a book for you and me and everybody.

What is the core message you want readers to take away from this book? Sitting in cities, we think the problem of girls’ education is solved—but it isn’t. The book brings that reality back into focus, showing that the job isn’t done just because a woman heads the Reserve Bank or a few women hold high positions. It’s not done until every last girl is in school with real choices.

I also want readers to see that this is solvable. It’s not hopeless. We have the data, algorithms to identify out-of-school girls, and community volunteers who support Educate Girls like Team Balika who say, “Every girl in my village must go to school.”

It’s not just a book about the problem—it’s about solutions and creating urgency to act now, while we can still change these girls’ lives.

Can you take us through your process of writing the book? I started by asking myself what I truly wanted to write. Then I built a skeletal structure: Part One is the girls world, Part Two is the beginning of the movement, Part Three is Moving at Speed.

Once I had that, I focused on one chapter at a time. Much of it came from my own experiences—work, conversations, observed stories—so once I knew what to include, drafting was surprisingly quick.

I dedicated one to two full days each week solely to the book, blocking the entire day for writing.

Then I was fortunate to be nominated for the Rockefeller Bellagio residency in Italy, giving me a full month with no family and no dinners to cook—just time for the book. I arrived with a manuscript in pieces and, in about three weeks, brought it all together for my publisher. That residency gave me the focus and closure I needed.

You have shared a small part of your story in your book. Was it difficult? I didn’t want the book to be all about my trauma, even though I’ve had a rough childhood. That wouldn’t serve the girls.

At the same time, if I only told the girls’ stories and never acknowledged my own lived experience, it would feel a bit dishonest, as if I was an outsider just looking in. So I’ve shared some of my story, but the heart of the book is the girls.

Can you talk a little about how your own life shaped the work you do for girls’ education? I had a rough childhood. There was violence, there was abuse, and at that time we didn’t even have words for it. We didn’t have the vocabulary, and society also made you internalize that somehow you were at fault, that you were not a “good girl,” that you should just shut up.

Because of all of that, I couldn’t continue my education after the 12th. It was a harsh time—everyone around me said: “Marry her off, finish it off, otherwise what will she do?” I was lost. I even lived at a Krishna ashram for a while, tried many paths, but nothing worked.

In that moment, an aunt stood up for me. I lived in her home for two years, and she just gave me a lot of love. And then, slowly, I came back to education. I went straight to the London School of Economics. I was 21, and everyone entering was like 18, but I told myself: it’s fine, I can be a mature student.

I didn’t have money, so I did everything—worked in the vegetarian café washing dishes and on the cash till, restocked books in the library, gave tuitions, worked in Southall making naans and rotis, did bookkeeping for small businesses—just to survive. That whole journey gave me this strength that I can survive, I can stand up.

So when I see girls now—like Halima, whose mother passed away during COVID, who had to run the house and then, four or five years later, when she wants to come back to education, she’s suddenly “over-age” and ineligible—I completely understand that guilt, that shame, that feeling of being left behind. A lot of this book really comes from that place.

You have received international recognition with the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award 2025. How has that impacted you? It’s changed the type of energy and motivation it’s given the whole team. It’s like, oh my god, now we’ve got it—go, go, go! There is a much greater sense of responsibility.

And now, being named one of Time's 16 Woman of the Year — what's that been like?

It feels like our girls are being seen on a global platform.

When TIME reached out for an interview, we had a sense something might be brewing, but nothing was confirmed then… we were kept in the dark right until the official announcement!

When it came through and I saw that list — Teyana Taylor, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Chloé Zhao, Mel Robbins — I was humbled and honestly a little overwhelmed. I stepped outside. The Mumbai sky was so clear you could see the stars. I stood there thinking about our girls.

(Sonya Dutta Choudhury is a Mumbai-based journalist and the founder of Sonya’s Book Box, a bespoke book service. Each week, she brings you specially curated books to give you an immersive understanding of people and places. If you have any reading recommendations or reading dilemmas, write to her at sonyasbookbox@gmail.com. The views expressed are personal)