Coca-Cola, one of the country's leading beverage companies, has announced Ju-un Nahar Choudhury as the new Managing Director of Coca-Cola Bangladesh Limited. She is the first Bangladeshi woman to take on the role of Managing Director for Coca-Cola Bangladesh Ltd. In this role, Choudhury will work closely with bottling and business partners, customers and other external stakeholders in the country. She started her career with Unilever as a management trainee in marketing, and left her mark in various roles including leading the team who won a Guinness world record for the nationwide ‘Lifebuoy handwashing washing campaign’ covering 86,000 youth simultaneously in over 60 locations, said the comps on Monday. She moved to Indonesia in 2014 with Reckitt Benckiser looking after the Dettol business. She also worked with Danone Indonesia as Head of Innovation and then joined aCommerce, an end-to-end ecommerce enabler present across seven ASEAN countries, as the FMCG director. Read more: Nahida Akter emerges as first Bangladeshi to win 'ICC Women's Player of the Month' award After spending eight years in Indonesia, Choudhury moved back to Bangladesh and joined Apex as marketing director in 2023. Speaking on her appointment, Ju-un Nahar Choudhury, Managing Director, Coca-Cola Bangladesh said, “I am delighted to join the Coca-Cola system and partner with our bottling partners, Coca-Cola Bangladesh Beverages (CCBB) & Abdul Monem Limited (AML), and other stakeholders to refresh our consumers in Bangladesh." She also said, "I am humbled to lead Bangladesh on this Coca-Cola journey and I am committed to steer our brands and franchise operations to new heights.” Choudhury is the first woman to be appointed to this position in Bangladesh and will be replacing former Managing Director, Ta Duy Tung, who was appointed back in 2021.   Read more: BUET Professor Syeda Sultana Razia wins 2023 OPCW The Hague Award Ajay Vijay Bathija, Vice President of Franchise Operations for Southwest Asia (SWA), said, “We welcome Ju-un to Coca-Cola. The Coca-Cola Company reiterates its focus on building a sustainable business in an important market like Bangladesh. Ju-un joins at an exciting time of the company’s journey in the country and our partners will gain a great deal from her wide experience in FMCG and e-commerce.” Coca-Cola is the first company in Bangladesh to launch 100% recycled PET bottles in Bangladesh. Coke Studio Bangla, as a digital music platform, boasts a YouTube channel with 2.86 million+ subscribers, surpassing the combined subscriber count of some of Bangladesh's biggest brands.  As per a socio-economic impact study, the Coca-Cola system in Bangladesh contributes to the continuous economic growth of the country and also supports nearly 22,100 jobs which consist of 833 direct jobs and 21,300 indirect jobs. Read more: Bangladeshi marine biologist Alifa Bintha Haque wins WINGS Women of Discovery Award

Dr Alifa Bintha Haque from Bangladesh has received WINGS Women of Discovery Award 2023. As part of the award, she is receiving unrestricted grants to further her critical work. The award ceremony was held on October 12 in New York City, according to a press release. Govt working to conserve marine biodiversity: Environment Minister Alifa is a board member of WildTeam and an assistant professor of zoology at Dhaka University. “I was very humbled to receive this award – woman of discovery, the 100th flag carrier. I was very fortunate to have been named in the cohort with the chief scientist of ESRI, Dawn Wright, and author of the 1st hotspot paper Cristina Mittermeier. It was such an honor!” – Alifa said. Bangladesh focuses on conservation, sustainable use of marine biodiversity Alifa’s work focuses on conserving sharks and rays in the global south context. She earned her PhD from the Nature-based Solutions Initiative in the Department of Biology, Oxford, with the support of a Bangabandhu Scholarship. Her research, “Towards a socially just sustainable fishery preserving sharks and rays in the Bay of Bengal,” aims to prepare a sustainability model for the threatened species of sharks and rays in close conjunction with the fishing communities. Alifa and her team have established the largest regional dataset on diversity, fisheries and trade, discovering highly threatened species of sharks and rays, including 15 new records. An Edge of Existence Fellow and National Geographic Explorer, Alifa was selected for the 2023 cohort of the Edinburgh Ocean Leaders Programme and awarded the best student presentation at Sharks International 2022 for her talk, “Can fishers be the conservation heroes we need them to be?” Read more: Dhaka signs treaty of high seas for sustainable use of marine resources