"Starting out, there weren’t many South Asian or Muslim role models in entertainment to look up to. When I entered this industry, I always hoped to achieve even a little of what Spike Lee did in bringing issues of my community and others to the forefront in entertaining ways."

"So now, I am a queer women and trans rights activist, a thinker, a sexuality workshops facilitator, and a fashion designer. I’m a complex human. But I am also just a regular person in search of belonging, love and purpose."

“Trying to figure out who I am as a person and understand my identity has been difficult. You know trying to combine being mixed, with being Muslim, with being female has been hard. I don’t really feel like all of these labels or categories fit with who I am all the time.”

"What I am surprised about is that I’m still hopeful. We need to get our voices heard no matter how many times they tell us to shut us up. We are not irrelevant. They are."

“I remember in the first few days of my life in the US, I was given advice from an American business consultant. He told me, ‘You might be offended by what I say, but I’m giving you this advice to help you.’ His advice was to not put the name Mohammed as part of my legal name in the US.”

"I hope to be voted as Maxim's Finest, as it would send a strong signal of empowerment to women around the world, who come from a similar background as me. My mission is to inspire women no matter where they are born to break out of their chains of oppression, pursue their dreams and realize their full potential."

"As a Muslim woman in a hijab, criticism comes from our own community and I have often found myself, like many, many of my sisters, faced with bigotry from the outside and sexism from within."

"One project that I was really invested in when I was home was doing research about honor killings; finding out about cases, and why they happened, and where they happened, and looking through different newspaper reports."

“The issues that hit home for me are de-radicalization among youth, women’s rights, child sexual abuse and LGBTQ rights…My biggest challenge has been reconciling my work [on these issues] with the culture that I come from.”

"Sometimes these facets of my identity would mesh into a confusing amalgam, and sometimes they would rest peacefully together. These students made me realize just how much an effective teacher could do. They made me reevaluate the meaning of being an educator."

"To me, being in the world without making an impact on at least one person, is like living a life without a purpose. Money and riches can make you famous, but a good name lives way longer than those material things."

“I write a lot about what it means to be named Khalid Mohamad El Khatib and to be pale with blue eyes, to be gay, to not have an accent.”

"I first started off in politics when I was nineteen I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to work for a senatorial campaign; little did I know, one of the people on the campaign would end up being the future president of the United States."

"If I can do what I am doing today, then anybody can do whatever they have in their minds because it's impossible for me to think that I own a jewelry business, and that it is now a million-dollar business."

“When I started my education, I did not have the financial resources to get good education. I wanted to do that, and I was the first person in my family to do it. This was only possible because of my mom. She taught in a school and gave tuitions so she could afford my education.”

"I was born in Siberia, in a small town. The name of the town is Tobolsk, in the Tyumen region. People don't know about this culture in America at all, but we are a very big culture in Russia and we are Muslim."