Education is about more than exam results. At Grace, our goal is to help students grow into confident, capable young people who are ready for whatever comes next, whether that is university, vocational training, an apprenticeship or a path they have not yet imagined. This is what “holistic education” looks like in action, and our careers programme is one of the clearest examples.

Career Awareness Day 2026

On 24 September, students in Years 10 to 13 gathered at the Grace Secondary Campus for Career Awareness Day. Moderated by Mrs K, the event gave students the chance to hear from professionals whose careers have taken very different, and often unexpected, paths.

Mr Shahir Chowdhury, Founder and CEO of Shikho, opened with a confession: football was his Plan A, and for years he was convinced he was “just not a maths person”. Despite a B in O Level maths and a C at A Level, he went on to a career in London banking with Barclays and HSBC and earned the Chartered Financial Analyst qualification. Seeing that talent exists everywhere in Bangladesh, but access to good teaching does not, he later founded Shikho, a learning app that helps students learn at their own pace. He shared inspiring stories of Shikho users, including a young man who studied on his brother’s phone between shifts at his father’s shop and earned a place at Dhaka Medical College. Mr Chowdhury also introduced students to “vibe coding”, where AI helps turn an idea into a working app, and challenged them to think about what they would build for their own school. His closing message: that C was not the end of his story.

Mr Md Salman Goni, CEO of Waffle Up, began by asking students to guess his career from a photo of a waffle on a stick. His path, he explained, makes more sense read backwards: from corporate work to a restaurant, into tech, through a business that shut down, and finally to Waffle Up, which has grown from Dhaka to Singapore. His key lesson was that something can fail without making you a failure. He encouraged students to run experiments, build a combination of skills and keep early mistakes small and quick. He finished with a challenge: with ৳5,000 and seven days, what could you create that a stranger would pay for? As he reminded everyone, your career is allowed to have plot twists.

The event closed with a question-and-answer session, giving students the chance to ask the speakers directly about their experiences and choices.

Mock Interviews

Hearing about careers is only the beginning. Through our mock interview programme, students prepare their own CVs and then sit real interviews with professional volunteers from our community. It is often the first time students have had to present themselves formally, answer unexpected questions and reflect on their strengths. The feedback they receive helps them build the confidence and skills they will need for university applications, scholarships and future job interviews.

Work Experience

Students also spend a full week in a real workplace through our Work Experience programme. Over the years, Grace students have “worked” at banks, hospitals, clinics, Book Worm, North End and many other businesses across Dhaka. For many, it is their first taste of professional life: arriving on time, working as part of a team and seeing how the knowledge they gain in school is used in the real world. Some students discover a passion they want to pursue, while others learn just as much by discovering what is not for them.

Holistic Education in Action

Together, these experiences help students connect what they learn in the classroom to the lives they will lead beyond it. They explore possibilities, practise real-world skills and gain a clearer sense of who they are and where they might be heading.

We are grateful to Mr Chowdhury and Mr Goni for generously sharing their stories, to Mrs K for leading Career Awareness Day, to the Campus Life team for organising our careers events and mock interviews, and to the many community volunteers and businesses who open their doors to our students each year. As our speakers reminded us, students do not need to have it all figured out, but they can start exploring now.