Two Women, Two Journeys: Events Help Shape Kumar, Shahid as Movement Drivers

Maria Teresa Kumar grew up in Sonoma, Calif., a daughter of an immigrant field worker, and spent childhood summers in strife-torn Colombia during the drug wars and days of narcos. Shiza Shahid was raised in Islamabad, Pakistan, and was witness to the growing takeover of the Taliban before accepting a scholarship to Stanford University.

For Kumar, it was being in New York City during 9/11 that moved her from the corporate world, and it was watching her hard working immigrant parents denied access to America’s social services that exposed her to injustice. For Shahid, it was learning of an attempted murder of a young, close Pakistani friend and social activist that showed her a new life path.

Kumar attended Harvard University and following her exit from the business world, focused on ways of educating Latino Americans on how to become a part of the process and have their voices heard. In 2004, Kumar and co-founder and actress Rosario Dawson created Voto Latino, an organization that spreads awareness via multimedia campaigns that educate and inspire the country’s Latino community.

The public attempt on Shahid’s friend, Malala Yousafzai, a 15-year-old girl who was targeted for assassination by the Taliban for her public support of education rights for women, created a story that shocked the world. Yousafzai’s survival and spirit provided Shahid with a mission that harkened back to her days of being an agent of social change as a teenager in Pakistan. The result was the Malala Fund with a goal of “enabling girls to complete 12 years of safe, quality education so they can achieve their potential and be positive charge-makers in the families and communities.”

Kumar and Shahid shared their personal stories Sunday as part of the annual conference’s discussion on “Leadership in Action: Discovering Purpose.” And while Kumar’s organization is more national and Shahid’s is more global, their achievements have given a voice to millions and spurred change that benefits communities around the world.

Purpose for Kumar included lessons learned while spending summers in Colombia, where resiliency produced happiness in the face of great insecurity.

“You did not know, if you walked out of your home to the grocery store, if a bomb was going to go off… Under that guise, I learned to appreciate the way Colombians lived… Living through a 50-year [civil] war, they [were happy] because they didn’t know if they were going to make it themselves the next day.”

That perspective made Kumar love and appreciate American even more and compelled her to open the eyes of all Latinos in America to this country’s unique opportunities.

“[Time in Colombia] taught me also what America was and its safety,” Kumar said. “Oftentimes we keep hearing ‘America is broken.’… We’re breaking it by not participating in it and by taking for granted the opportunities that we have with a social safety net, to make sure that our neighbors are safe and thriving.”

And that is where Voto Latino comes in.

“We have to figure out collectively how do we invest in nation building [in America]?” she said. “How do we prepare this new generation of Americans to understand the reins of power and to be prepared to lead truthfully, with integrity and continue being innovative… we are defining the next 100 years.”

Outrage can be a driver of purpose as well and for Shahid, outrage came in different forms.

“I think the first time I started to feel outrage was when we were nine,” Shahid said. “Kids, when they’re young they start to see hunger or a homeless person, we are outraged. And then it becomes normalized. And the other thing is when we’re young, we ask ‘Can we do something?’ And slowly we might feel like we can’t. Or we feel like there’s someone else doing things. Or it’s not our place.”

When the Taliban troops boarded Malala Yousafzai’s school bus, asked for her by name and shot her in the head, Shahid found her place alongside the Yousafzai family first in Pakistan and then in England during the recovery process. (“Probably the greatest miracle that I will every witness,” she said.)

“I knew that she had the opportunity to take what was now several days in a breaking news cycle and let that go or say you know what, I’m going to build off of this.”

Malala and her father asked Shahid to think about what that would mean and require and immediately, Shahid had found her purpose, leaving her job at McKinsey and Co. to create her fund and produce her book “I Am Malala” and documentary film “He Named Me Malala.”

Shahid is often asked by those searching for a purpose to guide them on a new professional or personal path or how to participate in social change, she said: “Feel angry. Feel outrage. Say it out loud. That person is hungry. That’s not OK in today’s world. And then allow yourself to feel like you can make an impact. Because I think we’re stripped away from that feeling that ‘I can make a difference.’”

Both women stand as brilliant examples of how love, determination and a sense of purpose can make a difference across the country and around the world.