Smart Disobedience: The Key to a Braver Life — Rana el Kaliouby, PhD

06/25/20 • 43 min

Have you ever been faced with this choice: remain obedient to your family by giving up your dreams, or pursue your heart’s passion, against your family’s wishes? My guest on HEROINE this week faced that exact situation. Rana el Kaliouby, PhD, Egyptian-American computer scientist and CEO, knew her patriarchal Middle Eastern culture required her to make sacrifices she wasn’t willing to make. After studying computer science and receiving her PhD at Cambridge, Rana developed a deep passion to bring emotional intelligence (EQ) into technology. While founding her company, Affectiva, she chose to leave her marriage, rather than give up on the work she believed in so deeply. Rana recently released her first book, Girl Decoded, a memoir about her life as a rule breaker.
In this episode, Rana takes us through her childhood in the Middle East, raised in a family of technologists with strict gender roles. While she wasn’t used to vulnerability or emotion growing up, Rana discusses her personal journey in dealing with emotionally complex situations throughout her life. We also learn about the importance of following your convictions, even if they don’t align with others’ expectations. Rana teaches us when disobedience is necessary, and how to keep yourself out of your own way in the pursuit of your dreams.
Show Notes
- Rana’s childhood growing up in the Middle East.
- The influence of Rana’s technologist family, with two programmer parents.
- How Rana creatively rebelled against her father’s patriarchal ways.
- The influence the mixture of a forward-thinking but conservative family had on Rana.
- How Rana’s family suppressed emotions about evacuating Kuwait after it got invaded by Iraq.
- The story of why Rana’s dad got angry with her while she was studying computer science.
- Rana’s dream to build technology that can capture non-verbal communication signals.
- How Rana realized that building EQ into technology was her calling.
- What EQ in technology can offer and how this vision helped Rana disobey conventions.
- The story of how Rana had to prioritize starting Affectiva to the detriment of her marriage.
- Having to become a disobedient daughter in order to become a powerful woman.
- How Rana overcame her self-imposed barriers to become CEO of Affectiva.
- Rana’s use of journaling to externalize and process her feelings.
- Being a mother amongst all of the career challenges Rana faced.
- Why Rana has decided to lead with empathy.
- One thing Rana is reclaiming and hopes her book does.
References
Rana el Kaliouby - https://ranaelkaliouby.com
Girl Decoded - https://www.amazon.com/Girl-Decoded-Scientists-Intelligence-Technology-ebook/dp/B07VF1SKPV
Affectiva - https://www.affectiva.com
The American University in Cairo - https://www.aucegypt.edu
Alexa - https://alexa.amazon.com
Siri - https://www.apple.com/siri
Affective Computing - https://www.amazon.com/Affective-Computing-Press-Rosalind-Picard/dp/0262661152
Untamed - https://www.amazon.com/Untamed-Glennon-Doyle-Melton/dp/1984801252
Ariana Huffington - http://ariannahuffington.com

Previous Episode

How to Choose Meaningful Work — Amy Yeung

Do you ever wonder how your skills and experience could lead you to your higher purpose? Amy Yeung’s soul journey from corporate fashion designer to social entrepreneur shows that inside each of us lies the ability to create positive change in the world. Owner of the Orenda Tribe lifestyle brand, Amy lives and works with artisans in the Navajo community to create upcycled clothing and share indigenous culture.
Growing up in rural Indiana, with her Native American heritage and obsession with fashion, Amy felt like an outsider. When she moved to New York to pursue her career in fashion, she knew she’d found her path and never looked back.
As a mother, Amy desired to leave a legacy focused on sustainable design and solving the social problems plaguing her native community. She left her corporate job behind and retraced her family history back to the Navajo reservation of her birth, where her studio is now based.
In this episode, Amy models reconnecting with ourselves by connecting with the land, sky, and water. She shows us that, while we can step into our true calling at any point in life, the best time to align with your greater purpose is right now.
Show Notes
- Learn about Amy’s Diné heritage and growing up in a small rural town in Indiana.
- The historical context that played into her mother’s decision to have her adopted.
- The difficulty of trying to translate your passion into a career in a community that is unlike you.
- Feeling like an outsider as a Native American artsy kid who made her own clothes.
- Starting with studies in pharmacy before convincing her parents to let her apply for fashion.
- The sink-or-swim experience of moving to New York and creating a life there.
- Ascribing her success to a deep understanding of being loved by her parents.
- How motherhood made her more community-oriented and invested in sustainable design.
- Responding to the call to consciousness by turning her back on the corporate measures of success.
- Rethink, revive, rebirth, and other re-words that form the foundation of Orenda Tribe.
- Learning about environment genocide, fracking, and other problems on her journey of reintegrating with her tribe.
- Advice for crafting the life you want: simplify, eliminate the noise, and connect to the earth.
- How the meditative processes in indigenous cultures brings us closer to ourselves.
- Reclaiming her ancestry, learning about the native community, and educating others.
- Find out which Navajo community service projects Amy is currently working on.
References
Amy Yeung on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amyyeung/
Amy Yeung on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/lilacreative/
Orenda Tribe - https://www.orendatribe.com/
Inc. - https://www.inc.com/leigh-buchanan/orenda-tribe-amy-yeung-navajo-reservation-albuquerque-new-mexico-main-street.html
Majo Molfino - https://majomolfino.com/
HEROINE (Podcast) - https://majomolfino.com/podcast

Next Episode

Following Your Creative Purpose — Elise Loehnen

When you’re faced with a new opportunity in your career, do you evaluate that opportunity based on the potential for growth it provides? My guest this week has used this measure throughout her career, and as a result, she takes career opportunities where she learns, grows, and adds value.
Elise Loehnen Fissmer is the Chief Content Officer of goop, the lifestyle and e-commerce company established by Gwyneth Paltrow in 2008. Prior to joining goop, Elise worked for Condé Nast and Shopzilla, where she adopted a mindset that helped her design a career and life aligned to her purpose.
In this interview, Elise tells us of her career progression from recent Yale graduate freelancing at Lucky Magazine, to the opportunity at Shopzilla she pursued because of the tremendous learning potential that came with it. She discusses her early days at goop, when she found herself more hands-on with the team. Recognizing her own comfort with staying behind-the-scenes, Elise now challenges herself to grow by taking on external facing opportunities to contribute. In this episode, you’ll learn about the importance of prototyping ideas you want to try, and Elise shares the questions to ask when considering how new career opportunities align with your purpose.
Show Notes
- Get a glimpse of Elise’s childhood: horses, making jewelry, and attending hippy school.
- Comforting her inner child and speaking to her anxieties around money and security.
- Hear about Elise’s middle school years as a competitive athlete, mathlete, an artist.
- The period of desperation after graduating from Yale during a time of job market uncertainty.
- How landing a freelance job at Lucky Magazine became her doorway to the media industry.
- Find out what Elise did in the period between working for Lucky and getting hired by goop.
- Why you should work for the company that will teach you what you want to know.
- Learning early on that waiting to be scouted, discovered, and invited was unrealistic.
- How goop started as a newsletter in 2008 and the organic way that Gwyneth scaled it.
- Goop’s approach to business: prototyping, experimenting, playing, collaborating.
- Beginner’s resistance and imposter syndrome and why women excel at conquering them.
- How Elise’s role has transitioned from managing to being an individual contributor.
- Learn what the Netflix series the goop lab is all about and the edgy topics they cover.
- The cycle of backlash that ensues every time goop does something expansive.
- Thoughts about why people tend to defend the status quo and how it relates to authority.
- The creative dream of writing a book instead of only ever co-authoring.
References
Elise Loehnen - http://www.eliseloehnen.com
Elise Loehnen on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/elise-loehnen-b867523
Elise Loehnen on Twitter - https://twitter.com/eloehnen
Yale - https://www.yale.edu
Shopzilla - http://www.shopzilla.com
goop - https://goop.com
Condé Nast - https://www.condenast.com
Gwyneth Paltrow on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/gwynethpaltrow
Who’s Afraid of Gwyneth Paltrow and goop? - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/03/opinion/goop-gwyneth-paltrow-netflix.html
the goop lab - https://www.netflix.com/za/title/80244690
Break the Good Girl Myth - https://www.amazon.com/Break-Good-Girl-Myth-Purposeful-ebook/dp/B081NH1KJC
Majo Molfino - https://majomolfino.com
HEROINE (Podcast) - https://majomolfino.com/podcast