What comes to mind when you hear “social innovation?” Is it entrepreneurship? Technology? Big ideas? When I hear “social innovation,” I think optiMize. I think unity, trust, family and community — the real things that will inspire people to change the world.

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Foreigner. Conservative. Oppressed.

America, 2016: I find myself placed into a seemingly indestructible box with steel reinforcements because of the cloth that lies purposefully on my head. I wear my hijab by choice, and yet those around me see me as a helpless, weak woman.

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For a long time I had a dream of being a teacher. When I co-founded optiMize I thought that dream was gone. I was an “education entrepreneur” now, not a teacher.

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A lot of people talk about having a mid-life crisis when they’re older, but when I was a junior at the University of Michigan, I was having a quarter-life crisis.

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