A graduate of Birkbeck’s MA Creative Writing, Nadia had already co-founded Egypt’s leading chain of bookstores, Diwan, with her sister. Prior to founding Diwan, she worked for a non-governmental organisation but she realised that the pace of change in Egypt was going to be too slow: “My sister and I both had post-graduate degrees in literature, and we were amazed that the modern style bookstore hadn’t come to Egypt yet. So, we decided to create it.” 

She has recently finished writing her first novel, telling her personal story as an entrepreneur and is a social history of Cairo during the twenty-first century. She is also a longstanding campaigner for women’s rights, having been involved with the Female Genital Mutilation Task Force in the 1990s. 

 Nadia regularly appears in the Forbes list of the Most Powerful Women in the Middle East.