11:55 am on Thursday, January 6, 1994, I was born at IranMehr Hospital in Shariati Street in Shemiran-Tehran. As the first child of my parents, who were starting their Married life, they were hopeful and striving for the best days ahead. From the abundance of photos and videos capturing moments from my childhood, it’s clear that they cherished and adored me.
They filled my early years before school with play and excitement, and when I reached school age, my father conducted extensive research to enroll me in a good elementary school. After considering about ten different schools, he chose Khatam Elementary for my education.
During my time at Khatam, and after that, getting into one of the best high schools in Iran (Rouzbeh Educational Complex), I dedicated myself to excelling in exams and scientific competitions.
My success brought great joy to my parents. My father always honored me, who had pursued higher education in business management, accounting, and civil engineering, but also harbored a childhood dream of becoming a pilot. He continued his childhood dream until he became one of the best pilots in HOMA. His passion for aviation intertwined with my interest in building model airplanes, becoming a shared source of joy and pride for us.
This continued until a tragic event on Saturday, May 5, 2007, when my father, the lone occupant of a test flight in a small aircraft, tragically passed away due to a severe technical failure. The family waited for 24 hours to break the devastating news to me, knowing the immense bond and dependence I had on my father. To me, my dad was someone who was strong and healthy, someone active and forwardlooking and someone who lived by strong moral values and never sacrificed them for material rewards.
After he passed away, my mother spent her entire life supporting and raising me and my only sister. Even though she was very young and beautiful, she made sacrifices and never remarried so that my sister and I would not feel lonely. After my father, one of my motivations was to make my mother happy. I remember how she hugged me when I told her that I had been accepted to Amirkabir University, and the happiness was visible on her face. My shining in any field brings me the shine of her eyes, which illuminates my heart like the sun. She and I are two people whose lives have become dependent on each other.
A few months after my father passed away, expert analysis on the crash reported that routine checks did not spot small gaps in the carbon-fiber plastic of the plane’s rudder and later triggered the accident. It could not bring me back to my dad but motivated me to pursue my studies as an engineer. The day I got admission in Materials Engineering from Tehran Polytechnic (one of the top two engineering schools in Iran) served as a reminder to me that I cannot control the twists and turns of life, but I must deal with them as best I can.
Since my school days, I have always found teaching others to be very intriguing. Therefore, throughout my post-school years, I was simultaneously engaged in teaching, and it could be said that I was mostly a successful teacher.
Towards the end of my undergraduate years, I met Fatemeh through a mutual friend, and I realized that she could be the best companion and partner for me in life. We got married in 2016, and as a result of our marriage, we have two children named Ali and Ala.
I named my son Ali to keep the memory of my father, whose name was also Ali, alive.
During my research thesis, I started to think to further develop our small family business out of it. His untimely departure completely altered the course of my life, and although it was tough, I found solace in my passion for creation and building. I applied for an MBA in Tehran Polytechnic and it was then that I figured and developed a special interest in the role of metaphors in developing and driving a product or a technology into to the market. Metaphors, as many authors argue, are not just beauty makeup or cosmetics of language. We live by metaphors and as American novelist Allen Kurzweil puts it nicely; we don’t choose our metaphors, our metaphors choose us. It was in fact the “resilience metaphor” after my dad’s incident which influenced and reshaped my character afterwards.
Today, I still hold onto the metaphors that both my parents taught me. Those metaphors tell me my best moments are yet to come. I believe I will come up with new ideas that can make a difference and also, as a lecturer from time to time, inspire younger engineers interested in putting small ideas into action.
