zara rahim on working with zohran mamdani, experiencing ego death, and what got her into politics
meet zara rahim
As you might expect, Zara Rahim had a busy last few months — she was working as Senior Advisor on Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign. When she has a moment to breathe, you might find her at Welcome Home bakery, grabbing a chocolate croissant, or heading to Jackson Heights for Bangladeshi food. A few weeks after the election, we talked to Zara about growing up in Florida after 9/11, having her mom oil her hair, and career ego death.
“I spent my twenties in wildly powerful rooms. I did Obama’s re-election, I worked in the White House, I worked for Hillary, and then I worked at Vogue. I was successful early, and if I’m honest, it was because I valued proximity to power. I kept moving — quickly, impressively — from one well-known institution to the next. I never stopped to ask myself what I was doing or why. I just did the next big thing. I said yes to whatever was the most glamorous, the most consequential, the most legible form of success. I don’t regret it; those experiences brought me to where I am. But I never interrogated myself. I never paused long enough to ask what mattered to me beyond the rooms themselves.
Then the pandemic, Trump, and the genocide forced a reckoning. All the shine fell away. It was a kind of ego death. I had to sit with myself and ask questions I had never before allowed: Proximity to power for what? Whose water am I carrying? Am I proud of that water? It wasn’t existential in an abstract way — it was very concrete. What did I believe in? What did I want my work to serve? What did I want my life to reflect?”
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we luv a bengali queen (if i am not wrongly assuming, bc same) - just skimming some of the interviews from this yr ! how wonderfully worded is this.
Link seems to be broken :(