Samal Rakhatova studied social media management in university, but she had trouble finding a job in the field upon graduation. She worked other jobs but felt unfulfilled and distanced from her passion. Eventually, she quit her job and became virtually unemployed, until she found Promising Professions for the Future, a project supported by USAID’s Social Innovation in Central Asia (SICA).

Farrukh Umarov, 29, from Tajikistan, is an Oxford University graduate and the founder of Ilmhona, a tech skills acceleration center. He was born in Istaravshan, a small city in northern Tajikistan, to a family of labor migrants. Farrukh's father, like hundreds of thousands of Tajiks, migrated to Russia when the boy was only 10.