Fereshteh Forough

BuilderModernb. 1985· Afghan

Founder and executive director of Code to Inspire, Afghanistan's first coding school for girls, which has trained more than 1,400 young women in Herat and online. When PayPal and banks were out of reach she paid students in bitcoin, and after 2021 the school taught graduates to manage digital wallets, convert earnings into stablecoins, and cash out through local money exchangers. Born to Afghan refugee parents in Iran, she has turned cryptocurrency into a working payroll rail for some of the world's most excluded users.