Shabnam Aggarwal is an entrepreneur, advisor to social enterprise change-makers and author. The founder of varied high-impact startups, she is best known for her work advancing the education technology revolution in India. Her contributions have been featured on media outlets such as The Times of India, The Economic Times, The Guardian, The Hindu, Huffington Post, EdSurge, VCCircle, YourStory and Entrepreneur.com. Shabnam has guest lectured on entrepreneurship at universities including IIT, IIIT and MIT, and spoken at TEDx's around the world. She is a fellow of Summit, Sandbox, StartingBloc and Uncharted, and a former executive at Pearson and Merrill Lynch. Having built three companies from scratch, Shabnam holds the irreplaceable experience of having failed numerous times in the startup world. She is passionate about debunking the stigma of failure, specifically for South Asian women who are often held to a different standard than the rest. Freedom to Fail is her first book. Originally from Northern California, Shabnam lived in Cambodia for one year and India for seven years building companies and writing about her experiences. Shabnam's popular blog blog.shabnamaggarwal.com has tens of thousands of readers. She is an avid explorer who does not currently reside in one place, but readers can find her talking shop on Twitter or upside down practicing handstands on her Instagram account, both @shubbless.
