Shazia's story

How a Common Purpose programme helped Shazia develop her coaching venture

Shazia Nizam, Creative Director and Owner, My Kolachi

Shazia Nizam attended the Pakistani and Bangladeshi Diaspora leadership programme in November 2015. We connected with her after two and a half years to find out how the programme has changed her thinking, both about her social enterprise My Kolachi as well as her new coaching venture.

“The programme led me to go back to Pakistan to focus on my social enterprise – My Kolachi. It gave me the idea to establish a legacy. Rather than just doing good, I should be thinking about how to ensure that My Kolachi is going to be self-sufficient and enduring. What is also really interesting about the point in time when I did the programme was that I had just begun training to be a coach and I was trying to figure out my coaching career.

“Fast forward to today: I’ve gone back to Pakistan to set up a coaching body there. The leaders that I teach fund me to teach young people. In this way, we can grow in two ways: top down and bottom up. I think that the programme I did with Common Purpose was really the water that flowered the seeds of my idea. It was really, really beneficial for me.”