Priyanka Sharma

consultpriyanka@gmail.com

MOST people have to figure their life out but for a handful, life figures them out. Nausheen I. Chen certainly belongs to the latter category.

Born and raised in Karachi, Pakistan, Chen was on her way to becoming a computer science engineer when she realized that she is a people’s person at heart, and the isolated life of a computer engineer or programmer was not for her. On her mother’s advice, she completes her studied anyways.

Her people skills and zeal to work in and for a community got her a job with Procter and Gamble in their PR, Media Relations and CSR department. She worked there for five years, realizing hardcore marketing without a creative side to it wasn’t for her.

The next one-and-a-half years for Chen were spent travelling and figuring out her next move. During an “experimental phase,” Chen and her friends formed an improv community that performed at a local café. On one of those performance nights, she and her team were discovered by a late-night comedy show director and just like that they had their own segment on a local TV show called “Wack and Friends.”

Terrible as they were, Chen couldn’t swallow not performing at her best at whatever she does. So, she got a Fulbright scholarship and got into a master’s program at The New School of Media Studies in New York.

While making projects for her studies she realized that filmmaking offered her everything she ever wanted. She was using her creative talent, her PR skills came in handy while looking for the right people to collaborate with, and she got to work, learn and grow with people from different walks of life all at the same time.

Come 2015, she had graduated and gotten married. Time for the next phase. Once again life did the choosing for her. Her husband and partner in crime has Chinese heritage with roots in Guangdong of all the provinces, and he had never been to China.

They both relocated to Shenzhen towards the end of 2015 to quench their curiosity, and the rest is history.

The city of migrants gave Chen such a warm hug she immediately got comfortable. Unlike her hometown, there was no crime on the streets and she was never made to feel less for being a woman.

After hosting several mixers, film screenings and media workshops, Chen decided to consolidate all her efforts under one roof. In 2016, Zen and Zany, a film production company was formed. In less than two years of time, they have managed to successfully complete over 40 projects.

Speaking to her thoughts on entrepreneurship, she says, “Everybody should try it once. Regardless of whether you succeed or not, you will learn a lot.”

When asked about her plans for the future, she says that she first needs to learn how to make plans, especially now that she is on the entrepreneurial road and has more than herself to think about, for she has always been one to figure things out on the fly and to go with the flow. “I want to grow on a professional level, the personal front, and I am still playing it by the ear.”

Chen, the Zany to her Zen of a husband, is someone who is not afraid of admitting that she still has a lot to learn and seeks the opinion and advice of people who are more experienced than her.