A powerful pink story!
I’m Zahra. Here, I’m going to share a brief story of my life with you.
1995: My Story begins in a warm family in “Tehran”. They taught me how to love myself and others. This chapter is a little short, due to migration of my family to “Ramsar”-a beautiful northern city of Iran.
There, I found my Art sense by touching the green hands of nature, so I got into poetry, hiking, handcrafting and photography.(See my old online gallery at: https://picsart.com/daylit). Facing such a small city and a totally different culture at the age of 7, resulted in strengthen my resilience and adaptability. We didn’t go to kindergarten, instead, mom raised us by story telling, brain games, learning by poems, Calligraphy, learning by biking, making polished dolls, playdough, flowering, etc. I remember my brother and me used to design and make our own brain games in childhood. Plus, I loved painting imaginary designs while he was perfect at Sketching out! We started Gymnastics from that age (then I moved to Volleyball and Ping Pong) and when we grown up, our main entertainment was blogging(#persianblog, #blogfa) , biking and video-gaming, as teenagers.
my interest to blogging and designing leaded me to learn basic web designing (by bootstrap) from coursera. The moment of loading my own gallery site on a local host was the best feeling ever! That was my passion of first coding experience, that made me to stay up too late(that’s rare, because I’m an early bird! )
Disclosure!: I never passed any English language course, instead of that, I started self learning from the age of 12 by reading song lyrics, singing, listening to VOA podcasts, reading Oxford bookworms, joining English chat rooms, Watching foreign news show, Searching everything on Babylon and so on!
Special thanks to my father that as an entrepreneur, has had an important role in my mindset: “find a way or make one!”
2013: After earning a high school diploma in mathematics and physics with a high degree, I decided to follow my passion to the interdisciplinary field of Management, Unlike the mainstream of studying Engineering! So I went to the University of Gilan. Industrial Management opened the window of the human sciences world to me. The study program included Theories of management, Organizational behavior, Production management, Operation research, Statistics in Management, Industrial psychology, Industrial accounting, Project management, Marketing, etc.
2014: I explored different student associations of the university and finally found my favorite: Management Scientific Association (MSA)- It is a hub made up of motivated students eager to practice team work and improve soft skills of themselves and others by providing free/cheap courses, holding conferences and competitions, inviting entrepreneurs to the university, linking BA students to MAs and Alumnus, publishing scientific journals and etc. Our website (modircademy.ir) was managed by WordPress and I really enjoyed developing content by it.
After two years of activity in MSA as a member and team leader, and interacting with the Entrepreneurship center of the university, I found a precious network of professional friends that helped me to find my career path more consciously. (Special thanks to my teacher and coach, “Dr. Mahmoud Moradi “).
2017: Though I had the privilege of studying master of management at the University of Gilan as a gifted talent, I applied to the University of Tehran to study master of Management of Technology and Innovation(MOTI) -The new field of MOTI overlaps with Engineering, Science and Management and Its study program consists of Technology strategy, Technological alliances, Intellectual property, Technology evaluation, Innovation management, Qualitative decision making models, etc.
That is how a new chapter of my story begins with coming back to my home town, Tehran. Alongside studying in Tehran I followed Ping Pong exercise seriously and won third place in the inter-university competition.
I also expanded my network and had three golden work experiences (in the Iran National Plastic and Polymer Association(INPIA) as an innovation researcher and consultant, at Cafe-bazaar — a successful startup in the IT industry — as an HR intern and in the Azadi innovation factory as the technical assistant to CEO; developing content in the open innovation area, for example I was the scientific editor in translation of #The_corporate_startup written by Esther Gons .et.al) trying to fulfill my passion for growing businesses and people.
Covid-19!: I’ve used quarantine to work on myself and find where I’m in my journey and where I’m gonna go! Plus, I’ve started new routines for my skin and body health. I Also opened my Instagram page(@ZMoradi1995) to expand my network with family and friends and share a more personal aspect of myself. I’ve found Instagram an useful tool to learn about cooking, self care, workout practices, fashion and somewhat get closer to new generation mindset (that’s amazing!).
I’m living with my grandma since the pandemic. that has been a new challenge for me;) We’re making sweet memories together that will stick in my mind forever for sure.
Now: I’ve just finished my thesis in the area of innovation capabilities and have had the honor of working with Dr. Nima Mokhtarzadeh and Dr. Mehdi Mohammadi as my Supervisors.
What about next chapter?!
