Born and raised in Lebanon, I look back at my days there fondly. However, when I think about my school years, I also recall how much I was afraid of being judged by others because of my stuttering – of someone looking at me weird or saying something, and anywhere in public in general. Fortunately, I loved being around family and speaking freely around these people made up my comfort zone. Soon enough, my parents didn’t want this to be an obstacle for me, so they found different ways to help, like taking me to speech therapy. 

When I was 18, I moved to Montreal to study business at McGill University. I ended up doing a double major in business and  psychology as well because I wanted to learn more about myself and better understand others. When I first started university, I would ask my professors to exempt me from any oral presentations to  avoid any activity that required me to speak. 

In my last year, however, I joined the debate club and started attending toastmasters meetings. What started supposedly as a challenging hobby to overcome my fear slowly turned into becoming a vocation by giving inspirational speeches. This has given me the extraordinary opportunity to speak in 4 languages across 3 different continents, to do keynotes at organizations like the UN, Boeing, Google, Tesla, IBM, Facebook and to deliver 5  TEDx talks.