Introducing Hebah Fisher

- This is an audio course, thank you for listening. (gentle music) - Hey everyone, Dana here. So we are actually cutting the season of "Al Empire" a little bit short, so this will be our final episode. With everything happening in the world we're just trying to refocus and kind of reshuffle our priorities across the company. That said, thank you so much for everyone that's been listening to Al Empire, this season and last, we've enjoyed producing every second of this show. So for our final episode, who could be more fitting to round this all out than our very own Hebah Fisher? My favorite CEO in the world, co founder of Kerning Cultures, the middle East's first venture backed podcast network. Hebah launched Kerning Cultures with co-founder Razan Al Zayani in 2015. And since 2017 has been running the network solo. That means raising money, pitching shows, producing stories, running marketing, organizing listening events and a million other things that frankly I do not know how she fits into her day. Hebah works harder than anyone I know. I spoke to her one evening last week, I was at home in LA, Hebah was in Seattle, I actually love that we're on the same time zone. She was in her closet and I was in this makeshift setup that our sound engineer Mohammed Haizad had helped me build via FaceTime. This was likely the thousandth time I've spoken to her across the six years of working together, but this time was a bit emotional for me. Kerning Cultures' growth has been so rapid that we hadn't ever before stopped and looked backwards. And, every podcast and every episode that we air marks a moment in our lives for each of us on the team. And if I can be personal for a little bit Kerning Cultures has been a part of my life for six years now. And in those six years, I've had some of the happiest and hardest moments of my life. And so as I sat down to interview Hebah about the past all of this kind of came up to the surface and, without even knowing it Hebah and this team has been a source of support and strength and deep friendship for me throughout everything and I can't tell you how much that means to me. So I tried really hard to keep it together during this interview, but there are moments where I burst into tears. Luckily, one of the perks of working here is that I get to edit those parts out. I loved getting to know Hebah in a way that I hadn't before and I hope you do too. I want to thank our amazing team for really being so excited about this episode and particularly Shahid bin Ahode who was the one that WhatsApped me after our weekly check-in calls and said I absolutely had to do an interview with Hebah as our final episode and she was totally right. So, Shahid, thank you. Another thing I want to mention is that this episode is much longer than usual. Given it's Hebah and given it's our last episode we thought it would be a good idea to just let it all out so I hope you stick with us. (gentle music) - It went viral, it was everywhere. - I used to tell my father you will see one day I will make a film and I will go to camp. (chuckling drowns out words said) - I felt insulted, I was like, where is my audience? - I didn't go to therapy I think I should have. - This is "Al Empire," stories of exceptional Arabs around the world and their journey to the top. (gentle music)