7 Questions to Mursal Hedayat (CEO, Chatterbox)
Mursal was born in Kabul, Afghanistan. She arrived in the UK, as a refugee, with her mother, a civil engineer.
She soon had a sad realisation. Many refugees with advanced academic degrees and skills face enormous difficulties in finding employment. Mainly due to the prejudice that refugees still face in society.
So, Mursal founded Chatterbox. An online language school that employs refugees as teachers and trains them to teach their native languages.
Mursal Hedayat is a Forbes “30 under 30”, MIT Innovator, UK Inspiration 50 and one of Financial Times’ Inclusive Boards Top 100 Most Influential Leaders in Tech.
And I had the chance to ask her 7 questions:
In your field, what is the question that people should be asking more but aren’t?
“Why aren’t there more people impacted by the social issues that people are trying to solve in the start-ups that are solving them?”.
Being a refugee has given me such a head-start in solving problems for the refugee community. Both on terms of problem solving and on terms of the authority with which I can direct solutions with my team and our backers and so on.
So I would love to see more people leading companies or working in companies that solve problems that they were impacted by. Be they social problems or other problems. I think the social sector — social impact space, social enterprise, whatever you want to call it — needs to ponder on why there aren’t more people who were impacted by the various kinds of disadvantages or negative outcomes that they are trying to solve. Why aren’t they represented in the teams that are solving them?
A new habit you introduced in your life or learning experience that greatly influenced your present self?
To meditate in the morning. I also try to fit some yoga or pilates before I have my breakfast. A full breakfast. All of those 3 things — the meditation, the yoga and the full breakfast — are very new to me. I have learnt to do these really basic good things for myself on a recent retreat in Thailand. The first break I took in more than a year and a half. They are so basic but they can add so much power into your life.
If you had the chance to write something on all the boards in all the classrooms in the world, what would it be?
“Rebel”. The current education system breeds factory workers. Or efficient cogs in a machine. And that is not what we need the worker of the future to be like. Economically, that is not what society needs.
What the world needs is more people with creative skills, communication skills, problem solving skills. And these are not things that are nurtured in schools today. So I would ask students to rebel against that indoctrination into a different way of being. And to go back to the way I think humans naturally are: creative, communicative and problem solvers.
In many, many, years, looking back to you life, what would have made you feel like you accomplished your mission?
I don’t really have a mission in life. I think that everyone that has the attitude that they have all of the questions answered in their minds or that they know how things work and therefore have a mission to accomplish are over-confident and probably, in all likelihood, wrong.
I think you need to have humility and realise that each of us just understands and knows so little about the vast and infinite universe that to have a mission or goal to accomplish in there and assume that it’s a worthy one and not just a random thing to strive for is a bit arrogant. I don’t have a mission to accomplish in my life. I’m trying to live my life in the most enjoyable and un-harmful way possible.
One (or more) book(s) that greatly influenced you and why?
I’m a huge Potter fan. I’ve relished the books with my eyes at least a dozen times and I’ve listened to the audio books with my ears more times than I’m prepared to reveal to the public (laughs).
I think that they are really interesting analogies for the real world and can be used to dissect a lot of the problems and challenges we face in society.
I also like Arundhati Roy, who wrote The God of Small Things and more recently The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. I think she writes in such a challenging and hopeful way. She writes about the darker sides of humanity with beautiful brush strokes that can still engage, captivate and inspire the reader. I wrote my first ever book review in school about one of her books. So that was really impactful.
Do you have a favourite victory/failure of yours?
Failures… When one of our tutors took me to task about some of the processes that our platform required of the tutors working there.
She criticised our invoicing process and lots of other things. At the time it always feels shit when your product hasn’t lived up to what you hoped it would.
But I felt extremely proud that I had created a space for her to offer this feedback to me as CEO and that I could immediately action the critiques she was giving. Second, this person in particular, I knew a few months ago when we started working together, was in a really vulnerable place and probably wouldn’t have had the confidence to criticise someone who was providing a service to her. She’d been passed from Homeless Centre to Job Centre and always expecting to be ignored or mistreated by each of these services. I felt extremely proud I had given her the space to stand up for herself and give direct critical guidance to people. I also saw the change that came in her as a result of having worked with us.
Specific roadblocks other people in your space should look out for (and how to overcome them)?
Underestimating what refugees as a community are capable of. Refugees are not monoliths, of course. They are diverse in terms of both capabilities and resources. Refugees are everyone from the founder of Paypal and WhatsApp to a destitute refugee living on the streets of London or in refugee camps around the world. So, to take in that diversity is essential.
How to overcome the roadblocks? Get to know the community before you try to sell anything to them or solve their problems. As with any group of people that you are trying to solve problems for. That is rule number 1. Get to know your user. Get to know the person whose problem you are trying to solve.
Bonus Question: Pineapple on pizza. Yes or no?
Yes. Always yes in life. Always try new things. And most of the time things are nice (laughs).
Thank you Mursal!
Vulnerable populations such as refugees suffer first-hand the problems of siloed, paper-based identity infrastructures. Their identities are in constant risk of loss, theft or fraud. We’ve been in their position. Unable to prove our past, unable to move forward. We’ve spent years fighting for our own identities.
At Tykn we are working to help public and private institutions help people better through the implementation of Digital Identity infrastructures. Creating access to human rights through digital identities. Bringing justice to the world. Because people matter.
Join us in the change we are making on Twitter, LinkedIn and Telegram!
