Taleya Rehman was born on 9th September 1934 in Bangladesh. She graduated from the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh, with an MA in Economics. She went on to undertake a research fellowship at the London School of Economics in London and qualified as a teacher in London.

She later moved to England and worked for the BBC for thirty years. Taleya was involved in the BBC World Service in Bengali, qualifying as a newscaster and producing women’s programmes. Through her work with the BBC, she became interested in the politics of language and in human rights issues.

In 1995, Taleya founded Democracywatch in Bangladesh, which campaigns for popular education and female empowerment. Democracywatch also advocates studies on democracy and good governance, and it is linked with a training institute to discover and train future leaders. Democracywatch has run projects in several areas including election monitoring and awareness programmes.

Taleya is the governing body member of a governance coalition, which includes, ActionAid Bangladesh, Democracywatch, Transparency International Bangladesh, FEMA, PPRC, BELA, BLAST and others, working to promote democracy and good governance in Bangladesh. She has been an official observer of general elections in Bangladesh and Denmark, and has been invited to observe Sri Lankan elections.

Prior to her work at Democracywatch and the BBC, Taleya was the deputy head of a secondary school, and director of Spectrum Radio in London.