A Bangladeshi satellite television station has hired the country’s first transgender news anchor, saying it hopes the appointment will help change society.

Tashnuva Anan Shishir, who previously worked as a rights activist and actress, debuted on Dhaka-based Boishakhi TV on the International Women’s Day. She read a three-minute news bulletin, and after finishing cried as her colleagues applauded and cheered, according to an Associated Press dispatch from Dhaka.

“I was very nervous, I was feeling so much emotional, but I had in my mind that I must overcome this ordeal, this final test,” AP quoted Shishir, 29, from an interview last week.

In her early teens, she began to live publicly her female identity. She said family members, relatives and neighbors started teasing her and she was bullied and sexually exploited. She started feeling that it was impossible to continue living and attempted suicide, she said, but survived and “left home”, the AP report said.

She moved from her family’s house in a southern coastal district to live a solitary life in the capital city of Dhaka, where she underwent hormone therapy, worked for charities and acted with a local theater group. In January, she began studying public health at a Dhaka university, which she is continuing alongside her job at the TV station.

Bangladesh officially has more than 10,000 transgender people, but activists say the actual number is much higher in the nation of more than 160 million people.

Since 2013, the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has allowed transgender people to identify themselves as a separate gender. They were given voting rights in 2018.

Boishakhi TV said it wanted to be part of the changes and has hired a second transgender person in its drama department.

“Our prime minister has taken many steps for the transgender people. Encouraged by such steps, we have appointed two transgender people. We want the attitude of society to change through these appointments,” Tipu Alam Milon, the station’s deputy managing director told AP.