YouSaid · the spoken record

Shiza Shahid

lines on the record: 54
first: 2022-09-08
most recent: 2022-09-08
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Won't, right? Fund social entrepreneurs where there probably isn't a path to an IPO or an exit, but those social entrepreneurs will then lay the groundwork for the next and the next, and eventually that market starts to form, or there has been a natural disaster and you need to provide relief. There's no market there. You need relief and aid services to go in. And so if we are to solve the world's most pressing challenges, we need every part of the system to work in tandem. So understanding where different parts in different sectors can work, I think, is really important. And I think also just not taking anything as black and white.”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I do. I do. I, for one, you know, just the scale we've been able to build to, we have been able to donate hundreds of thousands of meals we've worked with nonprofits fighting hunger. We've worked with nonprofits providing immigration support services. We've worked with nonprofits that are fighting against hate and racism. You know, we've created over 100 jobs in two years in the United States, more internationally. We have employed people given them good benefits, done our best to build a culture that's inclusive. I think nonprofits have a huge impact. I think businesses can have a huge impact. Of course, trillions are traded in the financial markets every day and nonprofits are just a fraction of that. And I think nonprofits should take risks the market.”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When we launched our collection around Iranian New Year, Noruz, we cast families who came from intersectional backgrounds and challenged the notion of who is Iranian and what do Iranian families look like and what do they care about? And we do that in every story we tell, we center representation behind in front of the camera. And I can tell you as a Pakistani immigrant how much that means to communities like my own who have simply not seen our traditions acknowledged or featured. It means the world to see yourself reflected back in brands that you admire in content that you consume because we've never seen it and we've never seen our identities affirmed and most of our lives we've sort of tried to fit in and be a little bit more Western and be a little bit more white.”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. I think, you know, this idea of career pivots can still be very intimidating and especially when you go from nonprofit to for-profit education to cooking and gathering. But so many of the skills that make you effective as an entrepreneur, as a leader are directly transferable. I see this in my own organization as well. The people who are most valuable, I know that they can do not just the job they're doing, but multiple other jobs. And for me, it was always if you ask enough questions, you can kind of figure anything out. One of the biggest skills I did learn though at the Malala Fund and in my work with Malala was the power of story to inspire change.”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Your convincing factories to open up new molds, new lines, to do things that have never been done before. And that makes it a lot harder, right? You're not just going, we're not doing what other e-commerce startups often do or other businesses often do, which is go to a factory, look at a booklet, point to a pen, say make it pink, and put our logo on it. We're starting from wise cooking hard and how do we make it easier and we're creating shapes, sizes, fixtures, features, inserts, add-ons coming from different places, different factories that have never existed. And then doing that at scale and then doing that through pandemic and inflation and supply chain challenges.”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, that's where my co-founders come in. So I have two co-founders. One is my husband Amir. The other is our friend Zach. My husband Amir, when his family fled Iran, they left everything behind. And when they came here, they rebuilt their lives by starting a kitchenware manufacturing business. So he had grown up surrounded by the industry. And so while he had never considered being in the industry or connected to it, he understood how to manufacture, how to build supply chains that were highly scalable and highly efficient, which is a very, very hard thing to do. And I, you know, I've invested in e-commerce companies and by and large, I think most of them will build a brand and get really good at marketing and forget how hard it is to make great products and not just great products, but products from scratch. Right.”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Knowledge where these highly complex ingredients and cooking techniques come from and give credit and celebrate the ways in which we eat and connect and cook together. And that really infused sort of the heart and soul of the business.”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We faced absolutely every rejection in the world, but that forced us to get scrappy. And so we were profitable our first year in business. And a lot of that was product market fit, but I think more of that was really the brand that we had built and the ways in which we were speaking to culture, community, tradition, and representation. And when you have stories that move people, you can shift culture, right? And at our place, we were entering an industry, food, cooking, that was very exclusive, very intimidating. Everything was about professional chefs racing against a clock on television doing highly precise tasks. And everything was rather whitewashed, right? There was really sort of this sense of there's European food and all the other cuisines could kind of fit into one aisle in the grocery store. And we were really pushing back against that notion and saying, can we just celebrate all of our traditions equally loudly? And can we acknowledge...”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's how the always pound was born, and it became this huge hit. We established product market fit very early for the product, but also for the brand.”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of the most commonly used pots and pans and where those intersected, we drew out the always pan. And then from there, we started to solve other design challenges. Things are heavy. Let's make it from lightweight cast aluminum. The beginner cook, you know, like your 11 year old probably needs a non-stick coating. So let's get a ceramic non-stick coating that works really well that also doesn't have a lot of chemicals that people are worried about. Let's add in things that just spark joy and ease, a little nesting spatula, poor spouts, a lid that traps and releases heat. And then let's make a really beautiful because you want cooking to be joyful and fun and playful in a source of self-expression.”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Our first product was the always pan, and it really grounded the design philosophy of the business. So the always pan stemmed from this idea of, you know, you walk into a kitchenware store and you say I'm moving into my first studio apartment. What do I need? And they will hand you a 16-piece cookware set. Say, here's your skillet, your saute pan, your stockpot, your saucier. A saucier is literally a pan just to make sauces. I had grown up with two pots, a flat one and a round one. And we got to thinking and we thought, can you do most of this in one pan? And so we took the literal Venn diagram of the shapes and sizes.”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I'm still learning. And I think that's one of the things that sets our place apart is we weren't founded by chefs trained in the culinary institute. We were founded by Home Cooks who often struggle to feel like good cooks.”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And spent a lot of her life in the kitchen. And now she runs an orphanage and she's living her best life, but a lot of her life was in service. And she didn't want that for her daughter, so she never taught me to cook. But then I moved halfway across the world, which she had not planned for, right? She probably thought I'd live down the street and she'd drop food off. And I couldn't feed myself. And it became something that was very disempowering to not be able to feed myself.”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I did not my mother never taught me to cook. She actually would never let me into the kitchen when anyone was cooking. Would tell me to get out. And I always thought it was because one of my cousins had suffered a really serious burn in the kitchen, and I thought she was just really scared. And I realized later in life that it was actually her way of liberating me from the life that she had lived. She had grown up having to do a lot of domestic chores and she'd gone from her father's house to her husband's house.”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, gradually and then all at once is how our place came about. I'm an immigrant, my husband Amir is an immigrant. He was born in Iran and then grew up in Los Angeles. And for both of us, we literally found our place in America by cooking and sharing food and having people come over.”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know, I have always been very connected to my home country and the idea that talent is everywhere, opportunity is not. And so as Connected tools became more common. The idea of training talent in places like Pakistan and then connecting them to job opportunities globally where salaries are higher was very, very interesting to me. And I've also been always very passionate about the craft that exists in my part of the world, embroidery and weaving and all of these ancient crafts where people are so skilled yet so underpaid and so exploited. And as there was this growing awareness of the importance of that craft in the West, I was and still am very passionate about building brands that employ people within those crafts, but then allow them to access much higher wages through effective branding and quality control in the things that allow you to build a beloved brand in the West.”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, it was, absolutely, and I was, you know, living in Silicon Valley, investing, taking classes. And while it's a huge privilege to be able to support other entrepreneurs in small ways, I needed to go all in on something. And so I was definitely looking for something to commit myself to. And when I met my husband, we started working together on the idea for our place.”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, I would say in the for-profit world, it was challenging because everyone wanted to get lunch because they thought the story was interesting. People like to put you in a box. And so, yes, I'd gone to Stanford and yes, I'd worked at McKinsey, but very quickly I was the nonprofit girl. And I actually had friends in the nonprofit world who had built long careers in nonprofit and they had told me when I was running the Malala Fund, think long and hard because the longer that you're in the nonprofit world, the harder it will be for you to launch a business. So just be sure. And I appreciated that advice from them. And so it was also hard for me to feel like I belonged there because every industry has its jargon. And when you don't know the jargon and you don't know the acronyms, you feel like perhaps you are not experienced.”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, I launched Now Ventures. I started dipping my toe into Angel Investing. So I raised a small fund to invest in mission-driven startups. And what I was really trying to do was reimmerse in tech and startups and understand the ecosystem and build a point of view around this intersection of business and impact and representation. So that was where I went next and over the next few years had the privilege of investing in about 20 startups and really just reimmersing myself into the ecosystem and also trying to prove that I belonged there, right? I had been the nonprofit girl for a while and making that pivot back into startups and tech was definitely challenging and I had a lot of insecurities to overcome, to have the confidence to be there.”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, I apologize to everyone. I'm still not responded to. But yes, exactly. You know, you're building something. And so I had been an entrepreneur growing up. I'd never had the language for it. There's no word for entrepreneur in Urdu. The closest we have is, I don't know, businessmen probably, merchant trader. And now with building the Malala Fund, I had started to build something in the US, a nonprofit, but I was surrounded by entrepreneurs building businesses and social enterprises. And that's when I realized I wanted to build something of my own as well”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And go to Nigeria after almost 200 schoolgirls were kidnapped by Boko Haram and meet their parents and hear their stories. And so it really continued to shape me. It also forced me to become an entrepreneur at twenty two, you know?”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I'm the one saying sorry. And so it was hard. And I would have people literally say to me, you need a guy with white hair in this room. And that's okay. You know, I think hard things make you stronger. And I'm really proud of the work that I did. And of course I made mistakes. I was 22, but I still make mistakes every day. But, you know, for me, this was really an act of love and an act of showing up. And it always felt that way. You know, I was doing this for this 15-year-old girl who deserved to have her platform to build on when she was well enough. And so that's really what guided me was this deep sense of love and responsibility. And, you know, it was hard. It was also beautiful and I got to experience really difficult things and the best of humanity and the worst of humanity and go to refugee camps in Jordan and sit with Syrian refugees.”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. Yeah. Totally. But in the nonprofit world, you earn your stripes, right? Earn the right to be there and you work up the ladder and you work for less money and it's not an easy world to be in. And here I was this 22 year old brown immigrant girl. And I was also, you know, for a while the gatekeeper for access.”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was really hard. You know, I was 22 years old. And in startups, you can kind of do that. And it's cool because, you know, Mark Zuckerberg and all that. But in the nonprofit world”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. You know, Islamic societies have long pushed forward in fields of education and mathematics and art. And I think a lot of what has happened in the region has really been geopolitical and not inherent to the culture in any way, not inherent to the religion in many ways. The region has gone backwards in this regard as a result of geopolitical instability. Girls are just the battleground for that when there is war, when there is instability, when there is poverty, women and girls bear the brunt, but they also very often are the ones who lead through it.”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The fund is always focused on secondary schooling as well, which really is the most pivotal intervention that you can make in a girl's life is keeping her in school through secondary school.”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that was really where we started, and we looked at what we could uniquely do. And, you know, of course, we had Malala's incredible story and microphone and were able to use that to push world leaders to show up, to get multilateral organizations to give because most education is still public education. So working within that sphere was really important. At the same time, we were able to galvanize people to contribute to the fund and then use those donations to find and support the other malalas, other grassroots leaders who are bringing change in their communities. And then storytelling was always a big part of it. You know, a lot of this sparked from Malala's story. Her father's story. And we knew that continuing to tell stories was the way to connect with people and to bring change and to shift culture.”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“While Malala's vision has always been to help create a world where every girl has access to an education that truly allows them to transform their possibilities in life. So not just going to school, but making sure that school actually teaches you something that changes your circumstances. Because a lot of schools just don't provide the type of education that's actually needed and we're not measuring quality and outcomes.”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we started to talk through it. And he's like, will you be homeless if this doesn't work? And I said, no, my parents would let me move in and sleep on the couch. He'd be like, well, would you not have your education or your networks? Be like, no, I'd still have a Stanford degree and a year and some at McKinsey and I'd have built this thing that would have connected me to all these people. And as we really talked about it, I realized the worst case was in many ways, you know, just starting over and failing. And it wasn't actually as scary as I was making it out to be. And I had to do this thing. And so quit my job, moved to New York with a suitcase and started the Malala Fund. And I think a lot of my life has been... That sense of showing up, really, if I were to boil it down.”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I did. I quit my job at McKinsey, which was not an easy decision because, you know, at the time, nobody knew this would be a nonprofit that could even sustain salaries. I'm a Pakistani citizen. I didn't even have a visa to be in the US or anywhere other than Pakistan. And so it was hard. It was a very scary thing to do. And here I was. I had this very cushy job. I had two more years and they were going to pay for business school. I had to earn an income. But I look at it as one of sort of the pivotal decisions of my life. And I just remember sitting at my laptop and I was working on a project for McKinsey and I was also drafting an email for Malala's book proposal. And I just kept, you know, switching tabs. And one of my friends came up to me and said, Shazza, what's the worst that can happen? Like, what are you really afraid of?”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do something that is yours that comes from you, that you fundamentally believe in. And that doesn't happen very often, right? When you hear stories of, you know, brown girls who are subjected to horrible things, we celebrate them in the West. We put them on covers on the West, but we don't allow them to lead their own organizations. We don't allow them to be entrepreneurs. That was very new and unexpected and badass. I would say Know she has really led her movement, and for me, I was 22 years old, was asking questions and just doing my best to help set that foundation”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so she really came out of it in this very strong way saying thank you I'm okay and I'm gonna do something for other girls. And from there it became we can actually take this attention and turn it into change for other girls and do it in a way that we believe is right because as you know when these horrible things happen and people become icons, it's very easy for others to say, you know what, why don't you come and support my nonprofit and my cause? And you know, my sense was that is short-lived, but building something that you really believe in that lasts forever, potentially. And so, you know, don't lend your name.”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you know, there had been people who had started crowdfunding in her name, and I brought it to Malala and her father and said there's people who are raising money for you. And they said, well, we don't need it, but we should use it to help other girls. And that was really the first spark of it. And we funded a project in Malala's community that she was passionate about to help girls in her community access education. And actually the first time she ever spoke out after being shot, she went on camera and she thanked people for everything and she talked about, you know, this malala fund.”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I had just landed in Cairo for a project with McKinsey, and a friend texted me and said Malala has been shot and I was just I mean I felt the ground completely collapse and then I really think just the world was shocked that in the 21st century a girl could be shot simply for wanting to go to school and it took this issue of girls' education one hundred and thirty million girls who are out of school. It humanized it and it made it personal. And that's sort of the power story.”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, you know, there was a flood in their community, so I went up and helped distribute some aid there. So I visited them. We were loosely in touch.”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, exactly. I was interning at a news station. I asked if they would fund it. They said yes. Then they said, but we want to televise it. I said, no way. And I think I went to UNICEF and I asked for money and they had a grant limit of $500 below which you didn't have to do much reporting. And so they gave me $500. I think I probably raised a thousand, got a guest house, sent money for a car to bring them all down. Malala's father got buy-in from all the parents, got a form with signatures for them to sign, got all my friends and contacts to volunteer. And that was it.”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, I think so. You know, I'm a little fuzzy on the exact timeline, but I think it was at the summer camp that it was the first time that we met her in 26 other classmates of hers.”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. And they use legitimate grievances. Get the community on their side. So now you had to get people to see who they were so that you could drive them out. And so the idea was let's bring these girls to Salmabad, let's give them access to the things that I've had access to, networks and resources and mentors. And let's hear their stories in a really safe format.”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And these things had been happening, but it was so hard to get information out that it was difficult to change public opinion because this group had come in, like most terrorist groups saying your community has suffered injustice. We're going to solve real social challenges in the way of Allah, right? Give us your gold and stand with us. So they didn't come in saying we're going to blow up girls' schools if they had, the community would never have stood by them. They promised social change, and then they turned.”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. It would be a summer camp where the girls were given some relief from what they had been through. So music, art, trauma, therapy, and self-defense classes, but also by virtue of being in the capital city, you're now surrounded by journalists and government and nonprofits who can hear these girls' stories firsthand. You know, it was very hard to get information about what was happening. In fact, what caused things to shift there was a video.”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I found a way to her father and I called him up and I said here is who I am and I want to help you and true to who he is he was immediately open and just said thank you so much and we kept talking about it so I said well what if I host a summer camp in Islamabad and you can bring your daughter and other girls from your community and he agreed So that summer I went back to Pakistan. I shared my plan with everyone. They told me it was a bad idea and”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was just so struck by this girl in her courage and her father and his courage, and I was also just I fell deeply accountable because here I was getting this incredible education that was wildly expensive beyond anything I had ever fathomed was possible for me. and less than three hundred miles from where I grew up, girls were being told they can't go to school. And I just felt like, you know, is there something I can do to amplify these stories? Because I don't think most people know that in the 21st century, there are places where girls can't go to school.”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I did. I was 7,000 miles away and I would spend most of my time calling friends and talking about Pakistani politics and human rights. And it was hard. I worried about my parents a lot. Thankfully they're safe and things there are getting better in some respects. But it was definitely hard”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We'd lived in the naval complex or was an attack right by there within sort of a one mile radius, several attacks, attempts. And, you know, I was very worried about my family and I would go to bed at night, my phone on full volume. If I got a ping, I would wake up panicked. It's hard leaving home.”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Trapped on this campus, where, of course, the perspective was different. So it was lonely and it was hard. And I remember I would get into the elevator and, you know, some of my dorm mates would say, how are you today? And I'd say, well, and I would start answering the question and one day they said, you know, it's just a figure of speech. And so I think it was a strange time in my life to be thrown into this beautiful farm where you were just meant to learn in a hypothetical way and take classes you were interested in and what a beautiful opportunity and gift. But my mind wasn't there and I was spending all my time online researching what was happening in my country. And you know this, guy, this was a time when things like suicide attacks and terrorist attacks were growing. They were very close to my home.”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you hit the nail on the head. It wasn't the Pakistan to America transition. It was actually the Pakistan to American college life transition. And Stanford is, it's just the farm. There's nothing there. There's no city. You eat in the dining halls. You go out to the frat parties and the closest city is San Francisco and it's an hour away. And how are you going to get there? So to me, it was the shock of being on a campus, it was also the shock of being, you know, this young person who had a lot of meaning invested in the work that I was doing. And here I was this, you know, middle class Pakistani girl from modest means and I was given the scholarship to Stanford University, which, you know, confirmed my sense that I was meant to do something to help my community. So, you know, I sort of showed up with all of this purpose and felt a little bit.”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Father's friends call him up and say, Oh, I see Shiz is on the newspaper, and he sort of laughed about it. And I think was secretly proud. And that's when I realized, all right, they're saying I can't do this, but I kind of can do this.”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The specific protests that you're referencing, those happened when the military dictator at the time Verve removed the Supreme Court justice in Pakistan. And there were mass protests. And, you know, my father, he was worried about me, the protests would get violent sometimes. And he would say, look, I'm employed in the Navy. And so, you know, we're not supposed to protest the government. And I think he was just protecting me really. And I would say, all right, I get it. And can you just drop me over to my friend Amna's house? And then I would sneak out to the protest. And sometimes they were huge, sometimes there weren't. And here I was the 16-year-old girl with my postcards and placards. And I get photographed and my photos on the front page of the national newspaper. So I'm running around the house kind of hiding the newspapers that day.”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Settlements and community probably a mile and a half from my home that I had never stepped into, but completely opened up my eyes to the power of women, to the power of grassroots entrepreneurship, and to the fact that I could do something in my life that felt important”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The very first thing I did was go with this nonprofit that was helping women in prisons and all I was doing was carrying medical supplies and that was just, you know, the very first thing that I did and the first time that I understood what it felt like to be exposed to communities and lives that were so different from my own and to feel like in some small way, even if I was just, you know, handing out vitamin C tablets to women who thought they were delicious and wanted to treat what it felt like to help. And one thing led to another from there, I began working with my friend's mother and she ran microfinance and micro enterprise programs for women in the informal settlements in Islamabad. And I had always loved to read and write. And so I started writing case studies about the women who received the loans and I would go into the enforcement.”
2022-09-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · HIBT Lab! Malala Fund and Our Place: Shiza Shahid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT