Similar to the American show of the same name, “The Apprentice” will feature 16 men and women competing for £250,000 ($410,000) for their start-up venture by competing in tasks such as designing a cellphone application, launching a magazine and creating pet food.
In this season, the 26-year-old Hossaini will be pitted against contestants who include a former bicycling champion, a trained actress and a business psychologist.
While that may seem daunting to some, Hossaini seems ready to take on the challenge. The public has been told she will say, “Don’t tell me the sky’s the limit when there are footprints on the moon.”
Last season’s US version of “The Apprentice” also included an Iranian woman. Mahsa Saeidi-Azcuy, 29, a former assistant district attorney in Brooklyn, was the seventh of the 16 competitors to be fired last fall by Donald Trump.
Hossaini, founder and director of InspirEngageInternational, a global consulting firm for youth business ventures, boasts having worked with a dozen Nobel Peace Prize winners like the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu. Her resume includes training by Al Gore on Climate Change in 2007 and leading the development of a youth strategy presented to the UN conference on Climate Change later that year. She is now also working on Al Gore’s Climate Project to support youth active in the environmental movement.
Hossaini says she’s been a social entrepreneur since the age of 13, when she became one of the founders of the UK Youth Parliament. On her website, she writes, “Success and passion are two words which are in close proximity to each other in my mind. When I was 13 years old and had just moved to England, and whilst my friends spent their weekends in town, I was sitting in the Houses of Parliament working with a group of talented people to come up with new strategies for youth engagement in the UK.
“That’s passion, and when you’re able to turn your passion for a good cause into a successful business model, then you’re a Social Entrepreneur.”
Hossaini’s success has been recognized with several awards, including the prestigious “Volunteer of the Year Award” from the UK’s Home Office in 2005, the “Woman of the Future Award” in 2008 and the “Asian Woman of Achievement” as “Outstanding Achievements in the Youth Sector,” presented by Prince Charles.
“I’m proud of the global company I’ve built and good at what I do,” Hossaini says. “But the real stars are the incredible young people I meet and work with worldwide. The ones who have nothing—literally in some of the communities I’ve worked—and still have dreams; they want to give something back.”
A graduate in law from Oxford Brookes University, Hossaini has lived in four countries and speaks five languages—Persian, English, Swedish, German, and French. She says in her audition video that her background is what makes her stand out from her competition, not just her resume.
“What makes me different from other candidates is that I come from a different upbringing,” she said. “I’ve come from a different way of thinking. I was born amid war in Iran. Our neighbors were bombed and we fled. I’ve been held at gunpoint in my own home. I’ve been kidnapped.”
Her story seems to have impressed the producers of “The Apprentice” who have selected her for the season that started Tuesday. If she wins, the British business guru, Lord Alan Sugar, will invest 250,000 pounds in her start-up venture. This is different from the last six seasons of the series where the winner was awarded a position in one of Lord Sugar’s companies.
“Don’t expect me to be doing all the work because I’m not looking for a ‘sleeping’ partner,” says Lord Sugar. “I’m not Saint Alan, the patron saint of bloody losers—you can look at it as a bit of an uncivil partnership, so to speak.”
Lord Sugar seems to be doing his part to act the role of Donald Trump in the British version of “The Apprentice” that Lord Sugar hosts.
