Why the Boldest Decisions Often Start with Everyone Saying No with Tasneem Damji

Welcome to Milestone Moments, the show where we explore the journeys that lead to success. I'm Sheila Slick, your host and founder of Five Milestones. In every episode, we will bring you insights from the minds of entrepreneurs, leaders and experts who will share not just their expertise, but the milestone moments that have reshaped their journeys and led to significant achievements. So if you're looking for motivation, you're in the right place.

Subscribe now and discover the milestones that mark the path to success. Welcome to another episode of Milestone Moments in Business and Leadership. I'm your host, Sheila Slick. And today, my special guest is Tasneem Damji.

Tasneem is an academic and career coach offering personalized coaching services to high school students planning their next steps. She's also a mother of two who helps young people follow their interests, stay grounded in who they are. and make decisions that fit their lives. She knows that path firsthand.

Welcome to the show, Tasneem. Thank you so much, Sheila. I'm looking forward to hearing your story. In 2011, you made a choice that almost everyone around you advised against.

Can you take us back to that moment? What was actually happening and what made you say yes anyway? You know, it's actually bringing chills because... Actually, you saying it that way brings me back to that time in 2011.

My son was about two and a half years old at the time. And I had lived in a place that was very close to my heart many years before Tajikistan in Central Asia. And my husband was from there. And when he was two and a half, I was at a place in my career where I wasn't feeling as that like I was making an impact.

in a meaningful way as I did when I lived in Tajikistan many years before. And I... Also was thinking now as a mom, we are living in Canada and my son had family in Canada and family in Tajikistan. And I wanted him to also know his family in Tajikistan, to also know where his dad came from and not to ever feel like Canada or his family in Canada was better than his family in Tajikistan.

And if he only lived here, that's probably what he would feel naturally. He was young. I felt like, you know, done everything I wanted to do in my job here in Canada. And I thought this could be a good time for us to move there.

And at first it was just my husband and I talking about it, just kind of thinking about how would that work and what would we do there? job wise and things like that and then we decided we're gonna do it and i decided to tell people that we are now moving to tajikistan that was the reason it was um for both of us it was for me to go back to a place where i felt really like i was making a difference in people's lives and for my young son to have that experience. And so that was the reason why we decided to move.

And it was a really big decision. Now I'm curious, why were people advising you not to do that? Well, you know, I'm now looking back on it in hindsight, most people have never heard of this country, or have never been to that part of the world. And why would we leave?

our nice life in Canada, where we have everything? Why would we go to a country that was so remote? And with that, a country that didn't have all the opportunities here, why would we go to a place like that? I think also another reason was when I used to live there, I had moved there after graduate school years before, probably about, yeah, a decade before.

And every time I'd come back home, I would complain. I would complain about, you know, the roads were really difficult. I lived in a mountainous region. You know, we didn't get all the kinds of food we would get here.

And so maybe they just, you know, some of them who knew me remembered me complaining, but I always went back. You know, like we can complain about where we live, but that doesn't mean that is your whole experience, right? And so I think that's probably why people thought it was a bad idea. When you don't know and you hear about different parts of the world and you kind of lump them into one place, you think that it's, you know, I think a lot of people thought it was not safe.

to live there or to be there without really knowing. And I'd lived there before and I felt more safe there than I did in other parts of the world that I lived in. And I think there was all of that. And then I had heard about comments about why would I take a young boy there?

You know, he was, when we did end up going, he was three. Why would I take him so young to a place he'd never been to? And why not just visit? Why move there?

You know, so I think there was. just a lot of unknown. I think some of it came out of love, for sure, and caring. And some of it was just people who like to just comment, you know, one of the comments I did get, which was totally not true was, oh, that's so nice of you to do that for your husband.

And the interesting thing is, as I've told you, it was actually my idea. I wanted to do it. And so, yeah, just a lot of different comments. And I really wasn't expecting all these people to have an opinion on this decision.

Yes, my family could have an opinion, but like people at work or people, you know, acquaintances or whatever, I didn't really expect them to have opinions. And they did. For those of you that are listening or perhaps reading, because this will be a chapter in an upcoming book, I am seeing a spectacular picture behind you. It's a picture that has four different frames and it has these mountains in the background.

And there's animals or some livestock. I'm seeing a bicycle and then I'm seeing a really big tent. Some people that haven't been to the country could perhaps even call it a hut. And because I've never been there, could you just give me a visual representation of what this country is like and what were you surrounded by nature?

Were you in a, you know, hustle and bustle kind of city? What was that like? This picture behind me in our dining room. is from Tajikistan, actually.

It's not where I live. This is actually, it is the mountainous region where I live, but this is one of the more remote parts of that region. And this is where nomadic people live. And so what this is called is actually a yurt, the tent that you're seeing.

And so this would probably, I think, is... on the border of Tajikistan and a nearby country, Kyrgyzstan, where a lot of nomads live. Now, what I lived when I first moved there, not the move that I'm talking about, but after graduate school, I lived in... The eastern part of Tajikistan, which is very mountainous, it has a beautiful mountain range called the Pamir Mountains.

Very high in altitude, really just beautiful, clean air. I remember actually at night, I have never seen this ever before since then, is you could look at the sky at night and see just... It was like a planetarium if you just looked above. It was that clean and clear.

I lived in a city, and the city there that I lived in, Korog, was just 30 ,000 people. So it's a really small city with one traffic light. When we did the move in 2011, we moved to the capital city, which is bigger. But it's not like a hustle and bustle.

kind of life, you know, it and maybe we'll talk about this later. But there was a lot of simplicity in our life there. But we did go to the mountainous region because that's originally where my husband's from. So I was able to take my son there a couple of times.

But yeah, just a really a beautiful place in nature, but also very hard place to live. The winters are really harsh. Electricity gets cut. It's quite remote.

And so you don't get all the things that you might need food wise and other things. So quite a harsh place to live. But also, you know, even though I don't speak the language very well, the people there are the kindest people I've ever met. And I think that's probably the thing I would always remember about this place was how kind the people are.

I love the word simplicity and combining that with the nature. It just. makes me want to be transported there. I'm feeling the peace just with that picture behind you and probably have so many different life lessons that you not only learned yourself, but your family and your son by experiencing this entire different culture than what we're used to back here.

Yeah. When everyone was telling you no, or even a day, if someone says to you, no, don't do it, it really takes something strong to hold your ground. What does that mean to you today? You know, you're right.

It did take something very strong for me to hold that ground because I didn't know, was that the right decision? You know, you don't actually know necessarily if a decision like this big is the right decision to make, right? But I think what was drawing me to it was thinking as a mother and thinking as a mother who wants to raise her child to know where he's from. That was the biggest push.

And at the time, I was working at the local university here in Vancouver, where I live. And I was managing a program in international development. It was an online certificate program for people who either they worked in international development, never got any kind of training in it, or they wanted to work in international development. And I remember talking to this one woman who wanted to be a student in this program.

And I asked her why. And she, I think she was originally from Bangladesh. moved to Canada or the US when she was very very young and she hadn't been back and she always regretted not going back and now she had older children and she always regretted not taking them there that came at a time when I had already made the decision but it just really validated it and also I think what helped me was I did have one colleague of mine who was older than me and And when I would tell her, you know, all these people are, I thought there would be support, a lot more support for me to go.

it's not showing up that way. And she said to me that when many years before she was about 10 years older than me or so, when her kids were younger, maybe about five and seven or something, her husband, he was a doctor, they closed up his practice, and they moved and took these two girls to Lesotho. And everyone she said around her did the same thing. and said why would you do that and I think more so when you have children you know why would you do that why would you take your girls to such a far away place a poor country what they thought of that country and she said when she they lived there for like seven years or something and when she came back she went out she went for a walk with one of those friends who had questioned her and was like why would you go there and her friend many years later now said the reason I said that was because I wish I could do something like that and when my colleague told me this again I book tickets were booked we were going to go still it just validated this you know someone who had lived experience like this and so I think you know really it was Not about me, actually.

It was not about my career. It was about me wanting to give my son something really important. As a mother, and I only have 17 years of experience as a mother right now, so it can change. But I feel like when I'm making decisions or when I'm wanting to do something that is for my child.

Now I have another one since then, but there's just something more. I don't think about everyone else. I just think about them. And I have lived a life since I graduated from university of moving abroad when people said.

What are you doing? Doing things that I didn't know where they were going to lead to. So it wasn't brand new for me to just do something that was out of, you know, what other people would never think of doing necessarily. But it was different because now I had a young child and I was making a decision for him.

And I also, I didn't know. where it was going to lead to. So it was a little bit different, but also I had become very used to this kind of life too. You now call it one of the best decisions of your life.

So what would make you say that? What were some of those lessons learned or experiences that you exposed your children to? And I want to hear that. Well, you know, now I can say that because my son is 17 years old now.

So we went when he was three until he was eight. So we ended up living there for five years. And I see who he has become, who he is right now. And of course, I only know him from his experiences.

I don't know what he would have been like without these experiences. look at him now when I see him. And it is quite emotional for me because he is finishing a really like critical stage of his life. He's graduating high school in June.

And I look back, you know, on all these years. And in fact, he has been by the time he got to high school, high school was his seventh. school in two different countries, three different languages, actually. And that is one of the best parts of what this experience gave.

He has the ability to interact with people of different cultural backgrounds very easily because it was part of who he was. When we lived in Tajikistan, when we first moved there, he was in daycare. And it was a Russian daycare. And he picked up Russian pretty quickly with just listening to his dad speak to him in Canada.

And in fact, for quite some time, he was my translator in Tajikistan. This three -year -old, we'd go to the grocery store and I'd be like, can you ask if they have apple juice? And he'd have to do that for me. So he went to this daycare where it was Russian medium daycare.

He had teachers mostly from Tajikistan. And he ate the food that they ate there. And then when he went to kindergarten, he went to an international school in English. And he had mostly teachers from the U .

S. and Canada and from Tajikistan. And then in grade one or two, he moved to another school there, which was also English medium, run by an Indian woman. Most of his teachers were from India with different accents.

He had a teacher from South Africa. teacher, you know, who is Portuguese, different accents, and he was able to pick them up very quickly and very easily. And so now, you know, we live in Canada, we live in Vancouver, where it is very diverse, and you have a lot of people from different countries and speaking different languages. And so that is something I think that will last him.

And I know it will last him a lifetime, those skills. The other thing. that I think made this the best experience. And I'll share a story of when he was about seven and he was, I don't know how it started, but...

He organized a donation drive at his school and it was a clothing donation drive and money. And we picked like a cause. There was a local soup kitchen there run by some nuns who would on a weekly basis give hot food to people who were homeless or older people who had been abandoned by their families. And so we decided the clothing, the money would go to them.

And the whole school got involved. They did a whole like drive at school, but they also did their end of year celebration and performance. We did like families could make food and people could buy food and the money would go to the soup kitchen. So we raised some money, he raised some money and some clothing, we gave it to the nuns.

And then I said to him, you know what, why don't we go see where this money and clothes went to? And we did. And we started volunteering together once a week at this soup kitchen. And it's unheard of in this part of the world where there are a lot of liability issues and things like that.

Over there, you could do that with a seven -year -old. And we went once a week to hand out hot meals to people there. They also had a children's group. And so we would sometimes buy some arts and crafts things and do some arts and crafts.

And he would play with the kids. What I noticed with him, because he spoke Russian really well, he could communicate with everyone there. And so he would. And a lot of them looked at him and remembered their own grandchildren or their own children.

And they loved having him there. You know, I remember one time I came home after being at the soup kitchen and I met a friend and gave him a hug. And he was like, oh, my God, like you, you smell like you reek of alcohol. And I said, oh, I was just at the soup kitchen.

Now, of course, many of them, they don't have regular showers. And unfortunately, as in everywhere in the world, many of them are addicts or addicted to alcohol and whatnot. And what I noticed was that my son at seven, never once asked oh why are they different from us like why you know why don't they have food why don't he just went in there and treated them like he would treat anyone else and what that did for me it you know we all have these subconscious biases and so I realized actually that When I would, let's say, pass a homeless person begging for money on the street in Tajikistan, I would often just pass them by.

And after this experience with my son, who was just seven and didn't know he was teaching me a real life lesson, I started at least with some of them and some I would see regularly on the street. I would say hello to them in my broken Russian. I would have a conversation with them. I remember when I would ride my bike to work and I would meet this one woman who would come to the soup kitchen.

And we often just met around the same time she was going somewhere and I was going to work. work, and we would start talking, I would never have done that before that. And so he taught me a huge lesson that I still practice today. And that compassion of that seven year old is still in that 17 year old that I see.

And so those were, you know, those are just some of the many stories of examples of why it was the best decision. It really like I just see who he is right now. One last story I'll tell you was We went grocery shopping one day and he must have been around seven. And we come out of the grocery store and we see a mom and a young girl begging for money outside the grocery store.

And we're coming out of the store with these bags of groceries. And I said to him, I said, you know what? Why don't we go back into the store and get some food for them? And we went into the store.

We got some bread. We got some yogurt, got some fruit. And then he was like, can I get some chocolate for her? I'm sure she likes chocolate.

And we went out and we gave them the food. This was just such a life lesson for him at such an early age. And I know that's going to stay with him for the rest of his life. But when I look at him, I would describe him many things, but one is very compassionate.

And I believe it came from there. Yes, because he had different perspectives, experiences, and you opened up an entire world, in my opinion, by having him participate in this experience. So today, you're an academic and career coach. Did this lead you to do that?

And I want to hear what got you to doing that. And how can you help other teens today with all of these life experiences that you've shared? Yeah, I mean, Tajikistan is the place that this work started from. But it didn't start when we did this move.

It started actually when I first moved there after graduate school in 2001. And that's when I lived in that mountainous region that I was telling you about. I was I did a master's degree in public health and I was working with some public health programs with an organization. But while I was there, I made some friends, colleagues and whatnot.

And many of them were either my age or younger, a little older, and they all wanted to study at universities abroad. And so we didn't have Internet at the time in 2001. We didn't get Internet prior to 2000. two or something like that.

And they said, you know, can you help us apply to universities abroad? And I was like, Oh, I've never helped anyone do that. But you know, I studied, I did a bachelor's degree in Canada, master's degree in the US. I know how to apply.

Okay, you know, so I would just, you know, spend like evenings and weekends as friends and just kind of helping them. And I really, I didn't know where that would lead or anything like that. I moved back to Canada. And then when we moved back in 2011, I met some of them.

who told me that they did go study abroad. They did their bachelor's degrees, their master's, PhDs. One of them, who's now a very good friend of mine, we're about the same age. She went to do a master's degree at Columbia University in New York in social work.

And she told me around 2012, when I had moved back, she said, I took the essay writing handout you gave me. I took that to all my classes. And I was like, really? I was like, I don't even remember writing an essay handout, you know, like I thought I was just helping you out, you know.

And then I heard from other students, other friends who had gone and studied abroad. And this was me hearing about it like a decade later. And so then when I moved there the second time and heard all these stories, and now there was internet, now there were organizations providing scholarships for students. And there was a lot more buzz when it came to applying to universities abroad.

I started doing some of this kind of work in different ways. When my son started an international school in kindergarten, one of the teachers that I told her about this kind of work that I've done before. And she says, you've got to tell the director. So I did tell the director and she really loved it.

And I ended up doing an afterschool club for grade 11 and 12 students. And it was specifically essay writing for college applications, actually. And then there were different organizations that I connected with and did sessions. I even started my own course to help students apply.

But not just apply, because when I had come back to Canada, I worked at a local university and I saw a lot of international students who were able to get accepted to the universities, but they were struggling with the academic culture. It was very different from what they experienced back home. In Canada, they had to participate in discussions. They were encouraged to ask questions.

They had to do group work. They had to do a lot of reading and writing and presentations. This was the total opposite of what the students in Tajikistan, for example, were used to. And I felt I would do a disservice if I just helped them get into university.

I need to help them succeed in the university. So the course was designed where the output was to apply to university, but... In the course, it was a face -to -face course, they would do presentations. They would write their essays and give feedback to each other.

They were encouraged to ask questions so that when they went to study in universities abroad, they would have that experience. So that's what really trampled this business that I now have, where I do help students apply to university. What I tell a lot of the students and families that I work with is that the output of our time together is a university application, let's say. But the outcome, the impact is having young people understand what they're interested in and ways that they can pursue their interests, not what is being dictated to them by society or what.

they think they should do, you know, and so that theme is very common in my life. And so I want students to choose for themselves their next steps after high school based on their interests. The other part of the work that I do with students as they're working on their applications, many of them will need to write essays. So the essay piece comes in.

Many of them will write essays for these applications. And these essays are not about their grades or their academics. It's about who they are as people. And they're 16 and 17 years old.

And they're still trying to figure that out. haven't had the practice of talking about themselves and articulating who they are. So as we work on these essays, that is what comes out of it. Their stories come out of it.

They come into a coaching session with me or a coaching offer with me saying, I don't know what to say about myself. I haven't done anything interesting. I don't think I've done the right activities. And by the time we finish, they're like, oh.

I am pretty interesting. And yeah, I do have these interests. And so that's what... families would get from me because I'm also a mother, right?

And so I know as a parent, what we all want for our children, especially when they're heading out on their own, we want them to be confident in who they are. We want them to pursue their interests and really not worry about what other people are doing or what other people are saying. That's where my lived experience, which I didn't know at the time when I was starting this business, really comes in because I have lived that and you know the reason this conversation is happening at a really perfect time is with my son graduating high school.

He's actually not going straight to university. He is taking a gap year. And that gap year is happening in Tajikistan. We have not been to Tajikistan in 10 years.

When we moved here, it was August, end of August 2016. And now we have a nine -year -old daughter as well, who's never been. In fact, she's never been on a plane. And so the plan plan is that we are going to go as a family in September to Tajikistan.

My husband, my daughter and I will go for a month and my son will stay there and for a year where it's really a full circle moment. Part of it is to spend time with his family. So when he left, he was eight. Now he'll be going at 18.

And he's got his grandparents there, uncles, aunts. So that's part of it. And then the other part is pursuing his interests and getting some experience. So one of the things that if he could do all the time, 24 hours, seven days a week, would be camping.

He loves camping. He loves being outdoors, camping and hiking. And I have seen that. I've experienced it with him.

I see him light up. You don't need to remind him to do it. He'll wake up at five in the morning to go, you know. And he thought of it as a hobby.

And I, because I do this work now. And I don't know if that's why I was meant to do this work, but I encouraged him to see this beyond a hobby. And so one of the things he's going to do is volunteer with a tour company in Tajikistan that specifically does camping tours for foreigners. So it's spend time with his family, get experiences, and exactly the thing we did when he was three years old.

but in a different way now. Absolutely love that. So for anyone that's tuning in or reading the chapter that would want to get a hold of you, where can they find you online? So I'm on LinkedIn, Tasneem Damji.

That is probably the best place to find me because I do post a lot there about, you'll hear a lot of these stories about my son, especially since he's in grade 12, but a lot of what I do. So Tasneem Damji is the place to find me on LinkedIn. For anyone that is listening that has been told to play it safe. What is that one key takeaway that you want them to walk away with from the story that you shared with us today?

You know, we all have regrets in our life and we only have one life. And so I think about the regret you might have and the weight that would have on you and maybe, you know, speaking as a mother on your children, if you didn't take that step. And I know it's scary. It is scary to do these things.

It is scary to not know where something is leading to. But if you could kind of shift your mindset and think about how much you can grow in ways you didn't know by doing something that is scary. That is different. That is something that others around you tell you not to do.

Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Tasneem. Thanks for having me. And thank you all for tuning in to another episode of Milestone Moments in Business and Leadership. Until next time.