The Azerbaijan born podcaster, Narmina Abdalova, is featured in Lokalt by Velour friend stories.

I heard about Narmina 2 years ago through a friend of mine, who worked with Narmina at Almedalsveckan, previously called politicians' week in Almedalen. This event is held annually in Visby, on Gotland, where representatives of both the Swedish political parties and all sorts of interest groups and companies gather and discuss politics and social issues. He told me that I should meet this young, powerful woman, since we had a lot in common. One wintery afternoon, I was able to meet with this lovely person with so much drive and spark! This frantic, creative energy comes out in her work, “Mäktiga kvinnor/Powerful women”, which is all about dedication to women. Her goal is to inspire, motivate and build Swedish women’s self-confidence.

'My name is Narmina and I am 25 years old from Sweden, Stockholm.
So, I came to Sweden from Azerbaijan with my parents when I was 8 years old. My father is, well he taught me to take risk, to believe in myself and dream big and you know as a big sister I have always had this leadership role and that is why I love to lead and in some kind of way to inspire and motivate other people.

One thing that my mom taught me was to express myself, to express myself in colors, to express my real self, you know that I don’t have to be like other people or people in my environment. And right now I try to do it in my style when I do my make up, when I like, you know put my hair up or whatever.. I do I try to express my self and be me and one thing that she also said: you build your own trend and you have to like put it out, your character, your attribute, your self through everything you are doing.'

'Some doors are closed because you are a woman. My purpose is to inspire, motive and increase women self-confidence you know and I want women to build their career in male dominated industries.

So, Lokalt by Velour, what inspires me most is that we share the same values and it is more about inclusion, open doors for people with different background, to work with women for women.

There are so many artisans, talented people, people who know things that we do not see that we should hire and include for doing something big, something new.

Jeans should be sewn after women and not the other way around.'

Don’t forget to listen to her podcast Mäktiga kvinnor /powerful women here.