Biography

Elena Chigibaeva is a full-time faculty instructor at the American University of Central Asia (AUCA), where she teaches courses in Design Thinking and Social Innovation, Agile in Social Innovation, AI and Blockchain for Social Innovation, and Senior Thesis Seminar I and II. She previously served for two years as Coordinator of the Social Entrepreneurship and Design Thinking concentration in AUCA’s Liberal Arts and Sciences Department.

She is the Co-Founder and CEO of WeinCrypto DAO, a social startup empowering youth and women through Web3 technologies to reduce the gender gap in Web3 and accelerate digital transformation in Kyrgyzstan and Central Asia. Elena is also a Co-Founder of ETHBishkek, a Web3 hackathon in Kyrgyzstan.

Ms. Chigibaeva is a 2018 TechWomen Fellow and a 2023 Fellow of the Frankfurt School Blockchain Center’s NFT Talents programme. In 2019, she co-founded the Techaim Foundation, where she served as CEO until 2022, overseeing more than 20 STEAM education projects that reached over 5,000 women and young people in Kyrgyzstan. She has also managed startups across diverse sectors and worked with international organizations, including ADB, GIZ, USAID, and UNDP.

She holds an honors diploma in Organizational Management from Kyrgyz-Russian Slavic University and a mini-MBA certificate from the Center for Training and Consulting in Marketing Management. In 2023, she was recognized as the Best Mentor for the USAID-funded DEVCIT project supporting women entrepreneurs in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.