The traditional lemonade stand wasn’t ambitious enough for Mariam Nawabi and her sisters. They were making money for college—nickels, dimes, and quarters wouldn’t suffice. So they put on a show in order to charge more money and to provide much-needed entertainment for their small South Carolina town.
Nawabi and her sisters, Alina, Samira, and Zohra Atash, were born social entrepreneurs. Native Afghan women, they have created a powerful business in order to create ties between Afghanistan and international markets. Their company, Afghanistan Market Development, Inc. (AMDi), has offices in the Washington DC area and Kabul, Afghanistan, and focuses on generating investment in Afghanistan through business management and consulting, investment facilitation, product development, sales and distribution, and more.
Nawabi is a mother of two young boys—Amir is seven and a half years old, and Omar is six years old—and has spent her life giving a voice to her home country as an attorney, entrepreneur, and activist.
“I think one of the key things for Afghanistan is there is hope,” said Nawabi. “If we can battle using words, not guns, then the future is bright.”
But over the years, the outlook wasn’t always so bright. When the war broke out between Afghanistan and the former Soviet Union in the late 1970s, Nawabi’s father, Dr. Mohammed Nadir Atash, who was a PhD student at Florida State University, brought his nuclear family to the United States. Meanwhile, five of Nawabi’s uncles were imprisoned in Afghanistan, and her grandfather, a general in the Afghan army, was imprisoned and later killed for refusing to support the Communist regime. Nawabi’s family became refugees and applied for political asylum, not able to return to Afghanistan until after 9/11.
Nawabi’s family moved from Florida to Irmo, South Carolina in 1985, where her father took a job with the South Carolina Department of Education.
“The racial lines were obviously very divided,” said Nawabi. “We weren’t classified as white or black. We ended up making friends there, but it took a while for us to assimilate.”
As soon as the family felt more at home in the small, southern town, Nawabi’s father worried they were losing their Afghan roots. The family moved to the Washington DC area, which was hopping with new immigrants. Nawabi focused on her studies, and in 1993, when she was a student on a scholarship at George Mason University, she helped start the first Afghan Student Association in the Washington region.
