Our column, The Female Gaze, is a place to elevate female empowerment and listen to those changing the world. Here, we speak to entrepreneur, activist and Our Place co-founder Shiza Shahid.
Ever since Shahid was a teenager, she has wanted to make the world a better place. Growing up in post 9/11 Pakistan, she was all too aware of the injustices that so many of those around her faced and decided to make changes where she could. When she was 13, she started volunteering, first at a women’s prison and a few years later, at a relief camp set up for victims of a devastating earthquake. These experiences formed the genesis of her entrepreneurial spirit – recognising a problem, and trying to find a way to help.
Since leaving Pakistan for a scholarship at Stanford University, Shahid’s career has soared. In 2013, at just 22, she – along with Malala Yousafzai – co-founded the Malala Fund, a non-profit which champions and invests in the education of young girls. In 2019, she co-founded Our Place, a hugely successful kitchenware brand that has made the domestic Instagram-worthy, turning pots and pans into objects of desire. Celebrity fans include Meghan Markle, Cameron Diaz and Selena Gomez. This month, it opened its first ever shop-in-shop at Selfridges.
We asked Shadid about her career trajectory, what makes a good leader and how she found freedom in the kitchen.
How did your upbringing in Pakistan shape you?
It shaped me in many ways. I grew up in Islamabad. My mother was the oldest of four daughters and comes from a pretty patriarchal time and place. She wasn’t given the opportunity to pursue higher education or to build a career. She married my father when she was 19 and met him for the first time on their wedding day. They turned out to be a pretty incredible couple, and together they made the radical decision that, no matter the cost, they would send their children to the very best schools they could afford. My mother felt it was very important that her daughters get a good education. As a child, every time I’d go into the kitchen, she’d tell me to get out of there and that she was cooking. I always thought it was because she was worried that I’d burn myself or I’d get hurt somehow; it was only later in life that I realised it was her way of setting me free and saying, ‘you don’t need to be in the home, you can go out there and dream big.’ Then I moved 7,000 miles away from home because I got a scholarship to study at Stanford University and I left behind my family, culture and community.
Photographed by Jenna Peffley
How did you find that?
On the one hand, it gave me access to incredible opportunities that I wasn’t born into and on the other hand, it was lonely. For me, as I moved to the US and eventually worked and travelled around the world, started the Malala Fund and was always working and hustling, there reached a point where this inability to feed myself and to cook a meal became the source of a lot of disconnection, loneliness and lack of grounding. Ten years in, I started learning how to cook. I met my now husband and we settled in LA, and it was really in that process of building a family and a home that I fell in love with home-cooking. As a first-time consumer of kitchenware in the West, I realised the industry was broken – it was very cluttered and looked the same. Most brands aren’t inclusive in terms of how they display their products, but also in terms of how they make you feel as a cook – that you’re only a good cook if you can create these highly developed recipes. I fell in love with the idea of building a kitchenware brand that really resonated with me – one that was inclusive and grounded in culture and connection. It also had to be beautiful. It’s ironic that what was the source of oppression for my mother became a pathway for liberation for me. It is about choice. For my mother there was no choice, for me there was. We make non-toxic, high-performance, beautiful products that spark joy. Cooking can be a chore or it can be a creative expression. When you have beautiful products on the stove you associate it more with joy, creativity and choice.
You developed a strong sense of injustice from an early age, volunteering at a women’s prison aged 13 where you carried in medical supplies. What prompted that?
I grew up in Pakistan in a post 9/11 world and was acutely aware of the growing risks around me – the terrorist attacks, suicide bombings, barricades going up in the city, the fact that most women and girls didn’t have the right to an education. My parents were also supportive of me volunteering – they didn’t suggest it, but they’d drop me off and pick me up. It nurtured my entrepreneurial instinct – if there’s something wrong in the world, we can fix it, whether that’s organising a protest or volunteering or starting a business. The through line in my life is seeing something wrong and thinking that I should do something about it.
What galvanised you to launch your own business?
A few experiences exposed me to the idea because it certainly wasn’t something I grew up seeing women do. When I got to Stanford, my peers were launching businesses – I saw it was possible to become a female entrepreneur. I was also forced to become the entrepreneur when I started the Malala Fund, when she asked me to found this non-profit and run it. I moved to New York and I became founding CEO. Although it was a non-profit, a lot of the lessons I learnt are similar to building a business – raising money, registering an organisation, hiring talent, building a brand and a community. Also, meeting my husband who is my co-founder, was key. I’m a big fan of founding teams. When running business, it’s important to know your limits and so having a strong co-founder is hugely helpful in laying the foundation in the right way.
Tell me how you met Malala and how your friendship with her began?
The New York Times did a documentary feature on her which prompted me to reach out to her. At the time, I was at Stanford and she was just 11 and already advocating for her local community. I ended up running a summer camp for her and 26 other girls in Islamabad to teach them how to be effective activists and entrepreneurs. My first impression of her was that she was smart, funny and so brave. We stayed in touch loosely over the years. When the news came about the shooting, it was just devastating for everyone who cared about her.
How did the genesis of the Malala Fund come about?
A lot of people had heard about Malala’s bravery and they wanted to help her and her family. What the family wanted was for others to help them continue their work to educate other girls around the world. I had an idea of starting a non-profit, and the family agreed to do it if I’d work with them. I was 22 and working at McKinsey in Dubai, and knew nothing about working for a non-profit. I agreed to doing it part-time alongside my day job, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I was constantly switching tabs from the Malala-related work to McKinsey, and I realised I had to do it and moved to New York. I was there a few years.
Why is educating young girls so important to you personally?
For all of us we have a vague sense that we could have been born into a different life. For me, it’s a lot more proximate than a lot of the people I spend with today. I don’t come from privilege, I was very close to a life where I wouldn’t have gone to school and had the experiences I have. With all the things that I have been given, there’s a responsibility to give back. World education has such an outside impact. When you educate girls, you end poverty, mitigate climate change, you bolster peace – there are so many connections to this one intervention.
Inside Our Place’s Selfridges shop-in-shop
Our Place reflects your values in terms of community, connection and culture. What have you learnt about running a business?
When you start any business, it magnifies your strengths and weaknesses. The things you’ve been avoiding – perhaps it’s being disorganised or a fear of confrontation – will suddenly confront you. You quickly realise that you have to work on those weaknesses otherwise it’ll affect the organisation you’re building, and also the team you’re growing. A good leader recognises their weaknesses and works on them. When you see the impact of that work, it’s so gratifying.
What traits do you need to become to be a good leader?
It requires a lot of optimism, paired with a degree of self-awareness otherwise optimism becomes delusion. Everyone will fight against you, so you have to have a lot of faith and belief in what you’re doing. You have to love what you’re doing and the people you’re doing it with. Knowing how to build a good culture is a big part of being a good leader too – articulating the strategy and mission and doing so consistently.
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What does success look like to you?
It’s constantly doing better in every way. We’re making better products than ever before, we’re constantly pushing and innovating. We created the non-toxic coating, then we created a new and better version. We created the first non-stick zero-coating so you can put it in the dishwasher or scrub it with metal. I just want us to be a little bit better at all that we do with great products, storytelling that makes people feel seen and included, creating deep trust with our consumers and a staff culture where our talent are happy.
How can we achieve a work-life balance?
It’s hard. I heard this term ‘work-life fulfilment’, which I like. It’s less about turning off your laptop and work phone as soon as 5pm arrives. I don’t think you can start a business if you want a 9-5 life, it doesn’t work that way, but it is important that you be fulfilled, healthy and have good relationships. Good leadership stems from a place of fullness rather than a place of depletion and disconnection. Leaders who have the ability to do Pilates if they have back pain, or can have family over to cook a meal are better leaders. Knowing how to fill your cup and when you are done and have no more left to give makes you a better leader. It’s important to be in tune with yourself and the rituals and relationships you need to make you the best version of yourself.
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