My role models are people who can do things; I say to myself, "I wish I could do that." Like women who endure hardships and turn their luck around and bring up children on their own and start a business. Or a social worker who leaves his country, his comfort, his friends, and goes far away to help people he doesn't know. I want to evolve into that, ultimately. I want to be that person who could sacrifice everything for others.

We're programmed to believe that time is the enemy, that it takes away from us or that it diminishes us. I have found that it's done the opposite to me. Life is in perfect balance. It's just that our perception of it isn't.

Holy scripture does not hold women back. It's the people that decide to interpret it in such a way for their own, sometimes political, agendas.

We look at problems happening halfway across the world and we think, 'Well, that's their problem.' But it's not. ... When you solve somebody else's problem, you're solving a problem for yourself because our world today is so interconnected.

It's about using social media for social change: creating a community of advocates who can use their voices on behalf of the voiceless, or leverage their talents, skills, knowledge, and resources to put more children into classrooms, or pressure their elected representatives to get global education top of the agenda.

It is all too easy to draw conclusions and make sweeping judgments about millions of Muslim women based on fleeting television images. That is not right.

I've learned to take things a little more easily, to be a little more forgiving of myself.