Jan 28, 2020
Sophia Mahfooz is a survivor, she is a role model and she is one of the most
inspiring people I’ve met. She was born pre-maturely, as
her village in Afghanistan was bombed while her young parents fled
to a refugee camp.
This trauma shocked her mother into labor and left Sophia with very
little chance to survive. Shortly after this, her
family quickly fled the war-torn village where she was born after
their home was destroyed.
Sophia spent many of her formative
years living as a refugee in Afghanistan, and later in
England. In our
conversation, she tells the story of her family fleeing
Afghanistan, making their way to England, and eventually how she
moved to San Francisco to become an entrepreneur.
She originally traveled to the U.S.
to care for her brother who struggled with bipolar
disorder. She
couldn’t afford to seek treatment for him within the U.S.
healthcare system, and she couldn’t send him back to England, so
she decided to figure out another way to treat him. Her efforts resulted in a
solution that she hopes to replicate and commercialize for others
who are trying to help their loved ones find relief from serious
mental illness in a cost-effective, and natural
way.
She is building a startup to bring
her vision to market to help others. Her business is called
NeuroX.
HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:
- Sophia details her early
childhood experience. She tells a harrowing story
of survival, escape, and how her family found their way to safety
after her village was bombed.
- She explains the
difficulties of being an immigrant / refugee. Sophia talks about
some of the difficulties refugees and immigrants face that I had
never thought of before. One specific thing she
explains is that she never got a birth certificate which makes it
nearly impossible for her to navigate parts of life that we take
for granted (identification, travel, visa, etc.).
- Sophia shared about
growing up in England and living what felt like two separate
lives.
There was the life she lived at school where she spoke English and
pretend to be a “normal” child who fit in with others. Then there was the other life
she lived at home where she spoke a different language, at
different food than her friends and often felt isolated because of
her race, and heritage.
- She talked about her
family’s history of mental illness. Her father had
bipolar disorder, and she talks about how she believes it to be a
byproduct of the stress he had to endure to survive. She also shares that her
brother later suffered from bipolar disorder.
- Sophia traveled to the
United States to take care of her brother when he was struggling
with manic episodes from bipolar. She said that they couldn’t
afford to admit him to a hospital in America for treatment, and it
wasn’t feasible to send him back to England for
help. This
led her to try to find a solution on her own.
- The idea for her startup,
NeuroX came from this pursuit of a solution for her
brother. She researched non-medical treatments for bipolar
disorder and found evidence that such treatments
existed. Sophia
started to try different techniques from diet, to meditation,
exercise, and other wellness routines with her brother. He showed signs of improving
and over time he was able to live a better life.
- Now Sophia is working to
build a program based on what she learned, helping her
brother, to facilitate other family members of people struggling
with mental illness. Her platform is designed to
be a resource for people suffering from mental illness and their
loved ones as they try to find natural, cost-effective
solutions.
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Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal
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