196. Maryam Pasha on Owning Your Own Narrative

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In this episode, Julia speaks with Maryam Pasha, Executive Director & Curator of TEDxLondon, about the power of owning your narrative in preventing imposter syndrome and why clarity about who you are changes how you lead.

Maryam shares that narrative isn’t just about telling your story. It’s about deciding the foundation on which you stand. When you don’t define your narrative, she says, you end up living someone else’s. She talks about the moment she realised she had been shrinking herself; to be agreeable, to be easy, to take up less space and how everything changed when she chose to show up with certainty and self-respect.

She describes the shift from being shaped by the expectations of others to shaping her own direction: a shift that gave her confidence, presence, and the ability to speak and act with conviction. When you know what you’re trying to do in the world, she says, you stop asking for permission and start owning your place in the room.

This episode is a reminder that leading doesn’t begin when others believe in you. It begins when you do.

About the Guest

Maryam Pasha

Maryam Pasha is a Storytelling strategist, producer and curator. She is co-founder of XEQUALS Studio, a creative studio dedicated to telling stories that can create a just, sustainable and joyful future. Projects include TEDxLondon, the Climate Curious Podcast and THE HERDS London. As a storyteller and coach she has worked with hundreds of speakers, including philanthropists, Nobel-prize-winning academics, business leaders, technical experts, activists and students. She has helped organisations to raise over a $1.5 billion to fight climate change, worked on talks that have been viewed over 25 million times and supported activists who’ve successfully changed the law in England to protect girls from child marriage. Earlier this year she joined the Palestine Comedy Club as an Exec Producer, is on the board on Climate Spring and a visiting Fellow at Oxford University.

About the Host

Julia Middleton

Julia Middleton is the host of the Women Emerging podcast and a best-selling author of “If that’s leading, I’m in” as well as two previous books: “Leading beyond Authority” and “Cultural Intelligence”. She is deeply committed to helping people from all backgrounds to find their own approach to leading.

In 2020, Julia launched Women Emerging and in 2022 she lead an expedition of 24 women to find ‘an approach to leading that resonates with women’. She now leads expeditions with women all over the world based on 4Es methodology, discovered in the first expedition.

Prior to that, Julia was founder and, for over thirty years, Chief Executive of Common Purpose, which grew to become one of the biggest leadership development organisations in the world.
Julia is also an Ambassador for the Aurora Prize based in Armenia, on the boards of Alfanar Venture Philanthropy in the Arab World and Equality Now, which operates globally, and on the Advisory Councils of Fundacao Dom Cabral in Brazil and Synapse in Pakistan.

Born in London and brought up in New York, Julia was educated at French Lycées and graduated from the London School of Economics. She is married, with five children and lots of grandchildren.