When Sidra Qasim and Waqas Ali landed in the U.S. not knowing a word of English, they had no idea how far their entrepreneurial journey would take them.
No one knows exactly when Sidra Qasim was born. Her mother's best guess is three or four days before a famous 1986 cricket match in which Pakistan defeated India by one wicket. So in a harbinger of how she would define her life, Qasim chose her own birthday.
As one of six siblings growing up outside of the small city of Okara, Pakistan, next to farms of mustard leaves, oranges, and mangos, she always asked why things couldn't be different. Why, for starters, were millions of girls like her expected to stay home, to raise a family, and to have their lives dictated by the men around them?
Qasim kept asking why, again and again, until she finally met her own expectations. What did that look like? Her company, called Atoms, cofounded with her husband, Waqas Ali, and bringing in $12 million a year; sneakers made by that company on the feet of Reddit cofounder (and Atoms backer) Alexis Ohanian at the Met Gala, one of fashion's most coveted red carpets; and a 13,000-square-foot warehouse in Brooklyn as HQ for that company — one with its own art gallery, and massive windows out of which, one warm afternoon, she would look out across the East River, to Manhattan's skyline and beyond.
Not on the day she was born — nor the day she chose — would the conservative Muslim community around her have imagined how far she would go, and how...
Read Full Story: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/429530
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