Moneeza Hashmi (Urdu: منیزہ ہاشمی; born 1946) is a broadcaster, television producer, actress and a former general manager and director programmes of the Pakistan Television Corporation (PTV). Hashmi has over four decades of experience working with public media. She is the Trustee of Faiz Foundation Trust, Pakistan and main organizer of Faiz Festival Lahore. She is the younger daughter of the prominent Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz.[2]
Hashmi started work at the Pakistan Television Corporation (PTV) in 1967 as an assistant producer.[5] In 1998, she level up to the position of the General Manager of Lahore PTV station.[5] She also worked in TV dramas in the 1970s written by Ashfaq Ahmed and Bano Qudsia and she was director programmes at PTV at the time of her retirement from the state-run broadcaster.[6][7]
Hashmi was thrice elected President of the board of the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association.[8] Later, she returned as board president when the CBA rebranded itself as the Public Media Alliance.[9]
She was appointed to hold the inaugural Benazir Bhutto Chair for Peace, Reconciliation and Development at the Lahore College for Women University in 2013.[10]
In August 2019, Hashmi became the chairperson of the board of governors of the Lahore Arts Council.[11] She is the first woman to hold the board chair.
Personal life
Hashmi was born to Faiz Ahmad Faiz and Alys Faiz in 1946.[4] She has an older sister, Salima Hashmi, who is an acclaimed artist, educator, and activist.[12] She married Humair Hashmi and has son Ali Madeeh Hashmi, a psychiatrist and writer.[5][13]
She was awarded the Japanese broadcaster NHK's President of NHK Prize for "outstanding achievements in educational media".[14]
"Hashmi was also awarded the NHK Prize for her role in women empowerment and raising human rights awareness".[7]
Bibliography
Hashmi's collection of interviews of notable Pakistani women, Kaun Hoon Main? (English: Who Am I?), was published in 2014 by the Sang-e-Meel.[15] In May 2022, she published Conversations with my Father: Forty Years on, a Daughter Responds, a collection of letters her father wrote to her four decades ago.[16][17]