The first Arab, Dubai-based, Egyptian Hijabi model in a Nike campaign, Manal Rostom, who’s also known as the Founder of the Facebook group ‘Surviving Hijab’, just spoke in front of around 5,000 people at the Facebook Headquarters in Palo Alto, California.
Rostom spoke about how she came to start her Facebook group, and how it grew to have around 520,000 members. Surviving Hijab is a support group for hijabi women, and it’s full of motivation, inspiration, and advice.
The athlete spoke for around 20 minutes, here is a clip of how her talk went,
While she was on site, Rostom also met with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, who she says was “everything I ever imagined.”
She also met the only Hijabi employee at Facebook and took the cutest picture yet! On Instagram, she wrote that she was “so proud of how far we have come to change the world’s perceptions about women who wear the hijab.”