Amra Tareen is founder and CEO of Allvoices, the largest global community offering local to global news and perspectives in one place. Launched in July of 2008, Allvoices is the fastest growing open media site with over 11.6M unique users per month and 440,000 citizen reporters from over 180 countries. Prior to Allvoices, Amra was a partner at Sevin Rosen Funds focusing on investment opportunities in the communications infrastructure and next-generation carriers. Before joining Sevin Rosen, Amra was a product marketing director at Ascend Communications (acquired by Lucent Technologies in 1999) where she was instrumental in growing the DSL business. She was also responsible for product positioning, competitive analysis and outbound marketing for the remote access business. Earlier she worked as the product manager for Ascend’s SS7 gateway. Amra received a MBA from Harvard Business School and a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from University of New South Wales, Australia. “When I volunteered to help relief workers in Pakistan after the devastating 2005 earthquake, I was on the ground for a short period of time, but the resilience of the people inspired me. I wanted to share my experience so the rest of the world could see what was really happening on the ground, but there was no way to effectively communicate this. I had pictures of the destruction and amazing stories of heroism and compassion, but how do I get this message out? Do I send an email to CNN? Do I write a blog that nobody will ever find,” says Amra. “This inspired me to start a company that would let anyone, no matter where they are, report on what they knew about an event, upload photos, videos, and express their views for a global audience. We quickly realized that in addition to sharing, every voice needs context so that readers can understand the viewpoint. We at Allvoices believe that you don’t need to be an avid blogger or expert to share your experiences with the rest of the world. All you need to do is contribute your news and relevant information to Allvoices and let us provide the context, community, platform and visibility for you.”
