Reema Zaman

When Reema Zaman was 15 years old, she wrote down 5 Questions to serve as a routine checklist to anchor and direct her daily narrative. 

1. What did I learn?
2. What did I create?
3. How did I nourish (my body)?
4. How did I move (my body)?
5. How did I give & care for others?

The 5 Questions have served as the compass for her storied life, one that has held large swaths of crisis, trauma, distance from loved ones, financial instability, and general uncertainty. The basis of her award-winning memoir, I Am Yours, (soon to be a Hollywood movie), Reema learned to use crisis, upheaval, and her 5 Questions as her education and fieldwork for life, relationships, and success.

Perfectly equipped to speak about creating calm and confidence during times like this, Reema shares examples of renowned leaders and inventors throughout history whom we associate with extraordinary courage, innovation, and cultural impact, to illustrate how, unknowingly, they too used the 5 Questions to serve the world and accomplish extraordinary feats. Additionally, Reema shares personal life-renewing wisdom on befriending silence and solitude through self-driven education, exercise, and meditation, on using adversity as leverage for growth, on using art and entrepreneurship as a ladder out of uncertainty, and clear strategies for creating a path forward during crisis.

We become the story we choose to believe. Be it about ourselves, each other, and different genders, races, communities, and nations. Drawing on the connection between her personal story of immigrant abuse to the current state of sociopolitical affairs, Reema makes an astute, heartfelt argument to illustrate how empathy lives on the other side of supposed Otherness and is the foundation for all cultural progress. With her signature mix of inspiration and keen intelligence, she shares the five key action-steps for us to immediately implement in our homes, communities, workplace, and larger circle of impact. Because, if not us, then who? The intention with which we live determines our impact and future.

Courage is contagious. With her signature blend of fire-breathing charisma and infectious passion, Reema brilliantly unpacks the social conditioning that has kept most women silent and insecure for generations by sharing her personal story of going from voiceless to empowered, beginning with a childhood in patriarchal Bangladesh, to her young adult years in the acting and modelling industries in New York, culminating in an abusive marriage in her-mid twenties, to then breaking free of the shackles to create a thriving business as an author, speaker, and activist for women’s and immigrant rights. Reema shares her 10 Proven Principles of Power to help any woman ignite her boldest, freest self, to overcome rejection, heal trauma, master her field, and create an empowered life of fulfillment, joy, success, and service. As Toni Morrison said, “The function of freedom is to free someone else.” Therefore, own your story so that you may empower others to do the same.

Whether conscious of it or not, we are each the author of our life. Have you been living a narrative of disempowerment or empowerment? Building on the work of FBI hostage negotiator turned business strategist Chris Voss, and renowned scholar and author Brene Brown, author, actress, screenwriter, and producer Reema Zaman shares critical strategies for women to develop their most confident voice, nail pitches, negotiate their true value, and lead with clarity and vision.

Trauma has been no stranger in Reema Zaman’s storied life. At age 23, she was brutally raped by a colleague she knew from the entertainment industry. Soon after, at age 27 she found herself caught in a sexual harassment case with a celebrity employer, while navigating an abusive marriage of her own. Reema found herself financially and legally disempowered, unable to leave a man who was using the threat of deportation as a way to imprison her. It was at this point that she began writing what would later become her widely acclaimed memoir, I Am Yours. Writing unleashed her voice and more: through writing, she began to understand the mind of her abuser and formulated the tools she needed to negotiate her way out of the dangerous situation.

In this powerful talk framed as a letter to her 23-year-old self, Reema speaks now as the person she is after a decade of hard-won wisdom, sending her voice “back in time” to the youngster she was—and the youngsters in the audience—to share the invaluable lessons she has learned by facing adversity. Building on the work of Gloria Steinem and Brené Brown, Reema is a partner with the ACLU and The International Rescue Committee and she’s credited for coining the term and mobilizing the examination of “immigrant abuse,” the nuanced intersection of intimate partner violence and racism that targets the vulnerable population of legal and undocumented immigrants. Reema answers the questions and heals the rage raised by the #MeToo Movement by providing the critical solutions to educate, heal, and empower, leaving every audience member inspired, uplifted, and transformed. As Reema says, “We are not defined by trauma; more accurately, we are the power and the love that can be discovered by turning the past’s wounds into wisdom.”