Ambition, Motherhood, and the Courage to Change Direction with Shireen Qadri
In this episode of Not Your Lawyer, Mona Reza sits down with Shireen Qadri – founder of moji masala – to discuss career transitions, motherhood, and building a business rooted in personal values.
Shireen shares her journey from Wall Street to entrepreneurship, and reflects on burnout, identity, and the realities of redefining success while navigating family and ambition. They discuss what it means to create work that aligns with life, purpose, and joy.
What You’ll Learn:
How to navigate career burnout and major life pivots
The balance of motherhood, ambition, and timing Building a business aligned with your personal values
Redefining success, balance, and joy over time
As always, while Mona is a lawyer, she is not your lawyer. This episode is educational conversation, not legal advice.
ABOUT OUR GUEST, SHIREEN QADRI: Shireen is the founder of Moji Masala, a modern food brand inspired by Kashmiri flavors and family tradition. A former Wall Street professional, she left finance to build a values-driven business that makes home cooking more accessible, healthier, and culturally rooted. Through Moji Masala,
Shireen brings together entrepreneurship, identity, and care by creating products that reflect both heritage and modern life. You can learn more at: mojimasala.com
TRANSCRIPT:
Mona Raza: Welcome, Shireen. It's so good to have you here.
Shireen: Thank you. Thanks for having me, Mona.
Mona Raza: For our audience, Shireen and I met—and this is very relevant to her company—because Shireen's mom and my mother-in-law are besties. They're old-school best friends. They both grew up in Kashmir. Their husbands were both physicians. They came to the United States when they were very young and raised their families here.
My husband, Raj, and Shireen were raised together like siblings. My husband doesn't have any biological sisters, so Shireen and her sister, Orfa, are the closest thing to sisters that he has. Shireen has become a dear friend and truly family to me as well.
I'm so happy to have you here with me, Shireen.
Shireen: Thank you so much. It's such a journey. Thanks for having me.
I also love that I'm here with you doing this wonderful interview. I really want to commend you on entering this chapter of your life where you're embracing everything that's meaningful in women's lives at this stage. And that's a lot.
Mona Raza: That's what it's about for all of us.
When we were young—Shireen and I are about the same age, although she's a little younger—I had health issues, so I had to have children very quickly. Right out of law school I had Intra, then a few years later I had Jenna while my husband was in residency and incredibly busy.
Navigating all of that was so hard that the path of least resistance was to work only part-time and focus on raising the girls, doing whatever I could just to make it through.
Often we'd go to New York, where Shireen lived in Manhattan, and I admired her so much. I would look at her and think, This could have been my life.
When you're fourteen or fifteen, you imagine becoming a tax attorney living in New York, owning an amazing condo, and doing exciting work. For me, Shireen represented that dream.
She had the beautiful condo. She worked at Goldman Sachs. She always looked amazing, always made time for us, and was involved in charitable work in addition to her career.
How long were you in New York after college?
Shireen: I really became an adult there. I established myself in New York, so a little over twenty years before COVID. More than twenty years, actually.
Mona Raza: I ask everyone this question, especially people who've made a major career pivot.
When you were growing up, what did you think you were going to become? Was New York always the goal?
Shireen: In our immigrant family, there was so much emphasis on deciding what you were going to become from a very young age.
My father was a physician, as were many people from South Asia. I was open to medicine because that's what I knew, but I also grew up watching my father during residency. My parents had us very young, so I witnessed firsthand how exhausting that life was.
Even though I remained open to becoming a doctor, everything changed once I got into high school. Physics and chemistry didn't come naturally to me.
My dad would say, "Chemistry was my favorite subject."
I finally realized, Maybe I'm just not cut out for this.
So, at fourteen or fifteen, I had to pivot and ask myself what I was going to do instead.
Business caught my attention. It was the 1980s, when there were all these larger-than-life business personalities. At first I was simply fascinated by it, but over time I genuinely grew into it.
My dad always emphasized independence. His perspective wasn't about prestige. He wanted me to become a doctor because he believed it would allow me to be financially secure without depending on anyone else.
As immigrants, that was his mindset, and I respected it.
But I knew I needed to pursue something different.
So I leaned into business.
Very early in our culture—and certainly in our family—you were expected to have a career purpose. That expectation mostly came from my dad.
When I graduated from college, New York seemed like the obvious place to go. I loved the idea of building a career there, finding a great job, and seeing where life would take me.
That's really how the journey began.
Mona Raza: It really was a great journey, and I loved watching it.
Was there a particular moment or season in your life when you thought, I don't want to do this anymore or I can't keep doing it this way?
Shireen: It's funny you mention visiting us and seeing your family.
I always wanted a family. There was never a question in my mind. It wasn't, "Maybe someday." I knew I wanted children. I loved kids.
Just as you looked at me and thought, That's the life I imagined, I looked at you and thought something similar.
You were one of the few people I knew who had children young. Because of your health circumstances, you had to start your family earlier, and I got to see firsthand the joy of being young and raising your kids.
That was always in the back of my mind.
Meanwhile, my career was incredibly intense.
There were many different phases to it.
In the beginning I was very young, working on Wall Street. It wasn't just high pressure—I actually didn't mind working late or having extremely high expectations.
What became difficult was the environment.
Today we'd call it toxic.
Back then we didn't even have that language.
Those workplaces were simply accepted as normal.
I internalized a lot of that toxicity while constantly thinking, This isn't who I am.
I was surrounded by people who had dreamed about finance since they were five years old.
I didn't feel that way.
For me it felt like a tremendous sacrifice.
About six months into Goldman Sachs' two-year analyst program—which was incredibly competitive to get into—I started thinking about leaving.
I interviewed for other jobs, but I honestly didn't even know what I wanted.
I remember talking with my father.
He said, "It's a two-year program. You're only six months in. You can't leave."
People today might hear that and think, You were an adult—why was your dad telling you what to do?
But I respected him.
Something about the way he said it—and the fact that I didn't actually know what I wanted next—made sense to me.
So I stayed.
Honestly, it was a little torturous.
I don't know whether that's always the right advice, but I'm grateful I stuck it out because by the end I understood the industry much better.
I realized I wanted to move to the buy side.
I had been doing research, but I wanted to be on the investment side, studying companies and investing clients' money.
That excited me.
Once I understood what I actually wanted, it became much easier to find the right opportunity.
Back then, staying with an employer mattered.
If you left too quickly, people wondered what was wrong.
A two-year analyst program was different because everyone understood it was structured training.
Today the mindset is almost the opposite.
People wonder why you've stayed somewhere longer than three years.
The expectations have completely changed.
When I moved into my next role, that became my real career.
I worked for an incredible investor who became my mentor.
I grew tremendously.
Eventually I became a partner.
My career was really built there.
The firm's core values aligned with mine, and I genuinely loved working there.
Looking back now, though, I realize another word we rarely used back then was burnout.
There were many times I thought,
"I feel like I'm burning out."
But instead of recognizing burnout, I thought I was weak for feeling that way.
About six or seven years into that role, I started wondering whether I should do something different.
Again, though, I didn't know what that "something different" actually was.
I asked myself,
"Where would I go?"
"What else would I do?"
I had convinced myself this was probably as good as it could get in finance.
Looking back, I think what I was really experiencing wasn't dissatisfaction with my career.
It was emotional misalignment.
I knew I wanted a family.
There were other areas of my life that weren't developing.
My job wasn't just a job to me—it was a career.
I wanted to grow.
I wanted to become valuable.
I wanted to keep learning.
I had all of those things.
I just couldn't understand why the rest of my life wasn't moving forward the way I hoped.
For a while I thought leaving my job would somehow solve that problem.
It wouldn't have.
In the end, I stayed until my boss retired.
Then I got married.
After that, COVID happened, and we all know what came next.
Looking back now, when I think about those seasons where I wanted to make a dramatic change...
Honestly...
The biggest thing I would have done differently is this:
I would have started therapy when I was twenty-one.
I truly mean that.
Friends can only help you so much.
They love you.
Sometimes they even put you on a pedestal.
If they asked, "Why are you staying in this job?" I'd think,
"You don't understand what it's like growing up in an immigrant family."
I carried responsibilities that existed mostly inside my own mind.
Many of my friends simply couldn't relate to that.
Support from friends is wonderful.
But it's different from having someone help you understand where you are emotionally.
I'm a huge believer in therapy now.
Mona Raza: One thing many people don't understand about physicians—and about being part of a physician's family—is how difficult those early years really are.
When I look at my daughters now, I realize one of the downsides of having young parents is that your parents often don't have much money.
They're struggling financially even though they have advanced degrees.
During residency you're making almost nothing.
During fellowship it's a little better, but not much.
By the time we finished fellowship, we already had both girls.
I constantly felt guilty because I knew I could probably contribute more financially, but at the same time I would think,
"These kids barely see their dad."
I needed to be there.
Something you mentioned reminds me of my daughters now.
Jenna is the Director of Football Operations at USC. It's an incredibly demanding job, and now she's in medical school—even though my husband tried very hard to talk her out of becoming a doctor.
She was determined.
What's fascinating is that her relationship with money and security is completely different from ours.
They've grown up differently.
They've had experiences we didn't have.
They've had therapy.
In many ways they understand balance in a way I couldn't even imagine when I was drowning.
Shireen: Exactly.
While you were going through those difficult experiences, you were also sharing them with your children in age-appropriate ways.
You were constantly teaching them.
By the time they became adults, they had already processed so much about how to enter the world.
Our parents were immigrants.
They were trying to survive financially.
They were trying to figure out a completely new country.
They were separated from their families.
They were trying to understand American culture while building careers.
They couldn't always help us emotionally because they were still trying to survive themselves.
As first-generation children, we're in a very different position.
We understand both worlds.
We're able to help our children emotionally in ways our parents simply couldn't.
Mona Raza: I think about that all the time.
My father-in-law still tells Jenna that all you need to have a successful medical practice is a stethoscope.
That simply isn't true anymore.
Medicine has changed dramatically.
The business of medicine is completely different now.
Honestly, that's probably an entirely separate podcast.
I understand where that advice comes from.
He genuinely wants his children and grandchildren to benefit from the opportunities America gave him.
Your own major pivot really came when you left New York.
I remember visiting you after you got married.
I had actually had a full hysterectomy just two weeks before your wedding, so the timing of that season in my life is forever connected to your wedding.
My girls were your flower girls.
Then you entered this completely new chapter—marriage, family, and eventually motherhood.
When we visited you after you moved, it was like meeting an entirely different version of Shireen and JD.
The suburban version.
Shireen: (laughs)
There was actually an important chapter between those two versions of my life.
It almost feels like it didn't happen because it became such a Groundhog Day routine, but it actually lasted about four years.
I got married in 2011.
My boss announced he was retiring in 2012.
I thought,
"Perfect. We want children right away, so I'm just not going to get another job."
I was almost forty when we got married, so biologically I knew we needed to start trying immediately.
I'd been working for so many years, and I tend to go very deep into whatever I'm doing.
I'm not someone who naturally multitasks.
I always knew that when I had children, I wanted to be home with them.
I'd waited so long for that season.
So when my boss retired, I didn't take another position because I assumed we'd become pregnant fairly quickly.
I don't know why I believed it would happen so easily.
Instead...
It took four years.
Four years of not working.
Four years of trying to get pregnant.
Four years of asking,
"What's going on?"
Today people talk much more openly about fertility.
Back then they really didn't.
Fertility treatments weren't discussed nearly as much.
I was living in complete denial.
There wasn't actually anything medically wrong with me.
I was simply older.
Everything happening was biologically normal.
Looking back, I learned so much during those years.
One lesson is that I probably should have accepted another job.
Even if it had been something lower-key.
Once a couple of years had passed, I kept telling myself,
"I'm going to get pregnant soon."
"I'm going to get pregnant soon."
So I kept postponing work.
Looking back, there really wasn't any reason I couldn't have continued working until I actually became pregnant.
I think I'd spent so many years working that I mentally divided my life into chapters.
I thought,
"I'm done with work."
"Now I'm moving into family life."
I became very rigid in that compartmentalization.
Again...
A little therapy probably would have gone a long way.
Shireen: Once we had our daughter, everything changed.
Looking back, it felt like the universe gave us exactly the gift we needed at exactly the right time.
After everything we'd gone through, finally having Nora was an incredible blessing.
Before she arrived, we'd reached the point where we honestly had to accept that maybe it wasn't going to happen.
Going through that process made us appreciate parenthood even more.
Once she was born, I knew I wanted to be home with her.
That was the priority.
We had wanted children for so long.
This isn't a commentary on anyone else's choices—it's simply what was right for us.
Then we started our business.
COVID happened.
Eventually we moved to Philadelphia.
But before all of that, there were those four years of trying to become parents, finally becoming parents, living through COVID, leaving New York, and building a completely different life.
Our daughter was only two years old.
I think all of those experiences made it possible for us to actually leave New York.
My husband is a true New Yorker.
Honestly, I think he's still recovering psychologically from moving away.
Even though we absolutely made the right decision and our lifestyle is wonderful now, when you've lived life you naturally wonder,
"What if we'd stayed?"
You replay those decisions.
You want to control the outcome.
As you get older, you realize how little is actually under your control.
There's always this tension between wanting to make the perfect decision and recognizing that life simply doesn't work that way.
Mona Raza: One hundred percent.
I love that perspective because we continue making big decisions.
It's not that we're fearless.
We move forward even while we're afraid.
That's faith.
You and your partner decide to take the leap together, and amazing things can happen because of it.
One thing I also love is that this major pivot wasn't just about motherhood.
It also involved your mother.
For people who don't know Kashmiri food...
My family can't eat at most Indian restaurants anymore.
None of us do.
Because, in my completely biased opinion, Kashmiri food is the very best Indian food you'll ever eat.
My mother-in-law and Shireen's mother take it to another level.
It's unbelievable.
My mother-in-law actually cooks Kashmiri food, freezes it, packs it carefully, and ships it to Los Angeles because Jenna couldn't find anything comparable.
Her grandmother literally overnighted paneer and kebabs.
Jenna prepared by buying rice and yogurt ahead of time because she knew exactly what was coming.
That's how special this food is.
Shireen, I don't know how you've done it, but somehow you've captured your mother's cooking in a little packet.
It truly tastes like Safia Auntie's food.
Tell us how that idea came about.
Shireen: It's funny because, in many Indian families, children don't actually appreciate the food while they're growing up.
They want pizza.
They want burgers.
They want everything else.
Then they become adults and suddenly realize just how incredible their family's food really is.
I was the opposite.
At five years old, all I wanted was my rice and rogan josh.
I absolutely loved it.
I ate everything.
The spicy food.
The achar—our Kashmiri pickle that's similar to kimchi.
The chutneys.
Everything.
When you're growing up, you simply take it for granted.
Then I went away to college.
At first, eating cafeteria food felt exciting.
I stayed fairly close to home, so I still had access to my mom's cooking fairly often.
I didn't realize how much it was sustaining me.
Eventually I moved to New York.
Working on Wall Street meant I ate dinner at work almost every night.
Dinner wasn't enjoyable.
It was just a short break before continuing to work.
It was incredibly unhealthy.
There wasn't food delivery like we have today.
You had to physically leave the office and find something to eat.
After less than a year, I remember thinking,
"I need my mom's food."
I couldn't keep eating that way.
It wasn't even about nutrition.
I was just deeply unsatisfied.
I called my mom and told her how much I missed her cooking.
She did exactly what your mother-in-law did.
She cooked.
She froze everything.
She packed it carefully.
Then she shipped it to me by FedEx.
I have no idea how much it cost her.
Mona Raza: When Jenna's grandmother shipped food to California, it was about fifty dollars.
Shireen: (laughing)
Exactly!
Twenty-five years ago, it probably cost about the same.
I remember sitting there eating every bite.
That experience became a turning point.
I was only about twenty-four or twenty-five years old.
As much as I loved eating the food, I also thought,
"This is kind of pathetic."
I realized I didn't know how to cook any of it.
Cooking had always seemed intimidating.
I assumed I'd only ever get to eat food this good when I went home.
Then I realized...
That couldn't be true.
I clearly needed this food.
I needed to learn how to make it myself.
That realization started what turned into almost a decade of learning.
About once a month I'd go home and ask my mom to teach me.
The problem was that she never cooked the same thing exactly the same way twice.
She never measured anything.
There were no recipes.
I was completely overwhelmed.
Eventually, after seven or eight years of trial and error, I finally learned to cook my favorite dishes.
I wrote down recipes.
I still have them today.
Originally, I wasn't doing any of that to preserve tradition or build a business.
I was simply doing it for myself.
Shireen: Eventually, when JD and I got together, we started hosting dinner parties.
We'd spend three days cooking Kashmiri food from scratch, and we absolutely loved it.
But everything changed after Nora was born.
At that point I wasn't working, and JD and I started talking about building a family business together.
That's when everything finally clicked.
I realized that if I wanted my daughter to grow up eating this food—not just on holidays or special occasions, but as part of everyday life—I needed a way to make it practical.
She was about six months old when she started eating solids, and by the time she was two she was eating really well.
I kept telling my mom,
"I can't measure every spice every time I make dinner."
"I can't do all of these steps every single night."
So one day she handed me a pre-measured spice packet.
She said,
"Here's the spice blend for rogan josh. You already know the cooking process. Just use this packet."
It simplified everything.
I could marinate the meat, follow the familiar steps, and still end up with food that tasted authentic.
It worked beautifully.
Suddenly I found myself cooking these meals regularly.
Then I thought,
"Wait a minute...this is a really good idea."
Part of what makes Kashmiri food so special is the incredible number of spices that go into each dish.
Buying all of those spices separately, measuring them every time, and keeping them fresh creates a huge barrier for people.
If someone could simply open one packet and know everything was already balanced...
Cooking would become so much easier.
That's really how the business began.
By then it was around 2018 or 2019.
Our daughter was about two and a half years old.
Originally, I was simply solving a problem for our own family.
That eventually evolved into creating single-use spice packets where one packet makes one complete dish.
Everything is already measured.
You just gather a few fresh ingredients and start cooking.
Mona Raza: Neither you nor JD had culinary training.
Shireen: None.
What's funny is that over the years I've realized cooking isn't really the hard part.
The hardest part is changing how people think about cooking.
Today, with delivery apps, busy work schedules, and great restaurants everywhere, people don't necessarily view cooking for themselves as a necessity anymore.
But I think that's a mistake.
From a health perspective, we're watching young people's health decline.
Even great restaurants are still producing food at scale.
They're often reusing oils.
You don't control the ingredients.
You don't know exactly what you're putting into your body.
For me, the purpose of Moji Masala isn't simply selling spices.
It's helping people rediscover home cooking.
Helping them become confident enough to prepare healthy meals for themselves and their families.
Maybe that starts with cooking three nights a week.
I know it's difficult.
I'm in the kitchen all the time, and I still think it's hard.
So I completely understand.
Mona Raza: Looking back, launching in 2019 almost sounds like unfortunate timing because COVID arrived shortly afterward.
But in another sense, it was perfect.
For so many families, the pandemic became an opportunity to try new things at home.
Restaurants were closed.
People didn't want to go out.
Companies like yours—and others like Penzeys—helped people become better home cooks.
Our family's pandemic specialty was cheesesteaks.
Raj would jokingly call them "Steak-Umms" because that's about all he knew how to cook.
Eventually we started experimenting more.
Using higher-quality spices completely changed our cooking.
That's one thing I love about your products.
You focus on sourcing organic spices and helping people understand exactly what's going into their food.
Eating well matters.
It makes you healthier.
It helps you think more clearly.
It even makes you better at your work.
One challenge with Indian restaurants is that you often love the food while you're eating it...
...but you pay for it later because of the heavy oils and everything else that's added.
Shireen: Exactly.
Most people don't realize that what Americans think of as Indian food is actually British-Indian cuisine.
The British adapted it.
They reduced the spices.
They added more cream.
They made it heavier to suit British tastes.
There's nothing wrong with that.
It's simply different.
That's what became established as "Indian food" in many Western countries.
Now there are amazing Indian chefs opening restaurants that showcase authentic regional cuisines.
But even then...
Restaurant food is different from home cooking.
Home cooking is incredibly healthy.
You can certainly make it unhealthy if you want to, but traditional home cooking naturally includes huge amounts of vegetables.
I can cook an entire head of cauliflower, and my family finishes it.
I'll cook two pounds of spinach at a time because it cooks down so much.
With just a few spices, suddenly everyone wants to eat vegetables.
That's really what I'm trying to teach.
The difficult part is helping people rethink what Indian food actually is.
It isn't automatically super spicy.
You can always reduce the heat.
Add yogurt if you want it milder.
There are so many ways to make it approachable.
Mona Raza: That's exactly what I experienced.
When our older daughter, Intra, got engaged, we were out looking at wedding venues all day.
My mother-in-law made barbecue chicken and saffron rice biryani.
My sister made a whole fish.
We got home around five o'clock, and guests were arriving at seven.
I had fresh spinach, canned chickpeas, and my Moji Masala packets.
Within that short amount of time, I made palak and chana that complemented everything everyone else had prepared.
Even if you already know how to cook Indian food, having an easy shortcut on a busy night is an absolute game changer.
Shireen: It's funny—when we were starting this business, JD kept saying, "We should focus on first-generation South Asians like us."
I actually thought the opposite.
I believed this should be for people who didn't grow up eating Indian food.
The funny thing is, many first-generation South Asians ended up becoming our biggest customers.
Growing up, most of us compare every dish to our mother's cooking.
We're incredibly critical.
If something doesn't taste exactly the way we remember, we immediately think,
"Well, that's not how my mom made it."
Ironically, many of us also never learned to cook.
In our culture, a lot of children—especially those of immigrant parents—weren't expected to spend much time in the kitchen.
We were told,
"Go study."
"Get good grades."
"Get into a good college."
Cooking wasn't the priority.
So now many of those same young professionals buy ten spice packets at a time because they're finally learning to cook the food they grew up eating.
Mona Raza: That's true.
I never really learned either.
When I went to law school, someone gave me the classic Better Homes and Gardens cookbook.
I made very basic recipes.
I ate SpaghettiOs.
That was basically my cooking education.
One thing younger people may not fully appreciate is that we didn't have Uber Eats.
We didn't have the internet.
We didn't have all the resources available today that make both cooking and balancing work and family easier.
Part of what I'm building now is the law firm I wish had existed when I was younger.
At the time, it wasn't even possible because the technology didn't exist.
Today, we understand that work doesn't have to be toxic.
One statistic that really stays with me is that women make up about 52% of law school graduates, yet only around 19% of law firm partners are women.
A lot of that attrition comes from trying to balance careers with caring for children or aging parents.
We can do better.
Shireen: Finance wasn't much different.
When I started, maybe 40% of my incoming class was women.
By the time I was thirty, I had already moved into my second firm.
I would walk into meetings with fifty people and often be the only woman in the room.
Many women simply looked at that environment and thought,
"I'm not going to do this while trying to raise a family."
Mona Raza: One thing I really admire about younger women is how willing they are to establish boundaries.
They go to therapy.
They prioritize balance.
Good for them.
Most of my mentors were men.
I remember being eight months pregnant and going to court.
Opposing counsel had a reputation for being an aggressive lawyer, but he treated me with incredible kindness.
Many of those men had wives at home raising children.
They understood.
At one point, the woman attorney sitting next to him started saying things like,
"When I had children, I went back to work after two weeks because I didn't want to miss anything."
I remember thinking,
"Why are we doing this to each other?"
There was no reason for that comparison.
Experiences like that have shaped how I think about leadership today.
Let's build workplaces where women don't tear each other down.
Let's learn from our experiences, keep what's good, improve what's broken, and help each other succeed.
Businesses like yours are part of that solution.
They help women operate at a high level without feeling like they have to sacrifice everything else.
One thing I know about high-achieving women is that we want to do everything well.
If I'm going to be an excellent lawyer...
I also want to be an excellent cook.
Having tools like Moji Masala makes that possible.
Shireen: That's exactly the goal.
One thing spices teach you is that flavor doesn't require complexity.
Once you have the right spice blend, you don't need eighty-seven ingredients.
If you enjoy fresh garlic, add it.
If you don't, leave it out.
You really only need a handful of ingredients.
Simplicity is the key.
I've also learned something personally.
For weekday meals...
"Good enough" really is delicious.
If you have good techniques and quality ingredients, the meal doesn't have to be perfect.
The other night I made dinner in about thirty minutes.
The three of us sat down together.
My family loved it.
That's one of the best feelings in the world.
Mona Raza: Absolutely.
There really is joy in that.
When I look back over my own life, I honestly believe everything—both the good and the difficult—has brought me exactly where I am today.
Even if I could go back, I'm not sure how much I would actually change.
When you look back at your own journey, if twenty-five-year-old Shireen were standing in front of you, would you change anything?
Shireen: That's such a good question.
My first instinct is to come up with a long list of things I'd change.
But then you have to ask the next question:
"Would I be able to live with all the consequences of those changes?"
You can't change one thing and expect everything else to stay exactly the same.
If I could speak to my younger self, I think I'd tell her that she really could have both—a family and a meaningful career.
I might have started my family earlier.
Maybe I would have had more than one child.
I had incredible support from my husband.
Maybe we could have made it all work.
But then I have to ask myself...
Would I have actually been that person?
Would I have been emotionally capable of embracing all of those moments the way I imagine now?
That's the deeper question.
Ultimately, I think what I lacked wasn't opportunity.
I lacked balance.
There were countless different decisions I could have made.
The real lesson wasn't about changing every external circumstance.
It was about becoming more settled internally—learning to appreciate where I was in life.
That's wisdom.
Everyone wants wisdom.
People always say youth is wasted on the young.
As I look back now, yes, there are many decisions I might have made differently.
But so much of that comes from believing there was only one correct path.
Life isn't like that.
Mona Raza: You know, we have a third child now.
We adopted our son in 2020.
When people say, "Oh, that must have been so easy," I always laugh.
He's ten now.
Boys are different.
I honestly think you have to give boys about five extra years compared to girls.
By then I had already launched my business.
I was building something while also parenting.
It's a very different experience from being a stay-at-home mom.
You're running a startup.
You said something a minute ago that really resonated with me:
"Good enough is good enough."
It doesn't have to be perfect.
Everyone isn't going to agree with every decision you make.
Some things you once believed were non-negotiable eventually have to change.
I've learned that my best is enough.
Some days are better than others, but at the end of the day, I'm moving my family forward.
I'm also a person.
I have feelings.
I have preferences.
Sometimes I even have to remind my family of that.
I remember having this realization one day while traveling.
I thought,
"I don't have to sit in the middle seat on the airplane anymore."
Everyone else can sit somewhere else.
I'm taking the window seat.
It sounds so small, but it represented finally acknowledging that my preferences matter too.
Shireen: That's actually such a great example.
When I look at your family from the outside, adopting your son really completed your family.
I see you balancing everything.
Your adult daughters still need you.
Your husband still needs you.
But there's also this confidence you have now.
When you're younger, you're constantly questioning yourself.
Now you make decisions with confidence.
For me, my day has become very compartmentalized.
JD handles breakfast.
He takes Nora to school.
We both work during the day.
But I always want to do school pickup.
I want to be there when she walks out of school.
I want to see her face immediately.
Did she have a good day?
Did something happen?
Is she smiling?
Is she upset?
I don't want someone else telling me later.
I want to know in that moment.
Then I want to make her afternoon snack.
From about three o'clock until seven o'clock, I'm basically a stay-at-home mom.
I don't work during those hours.
Everything else has to happen before or after that window.
From eight until about 2:30, I'm working.
From 2:30 until seven, I'm fully present as Mom.
That rhythm really works for me.
Has my business grown more slowly because of that?
Absolutely.
Probably much more slowly than it otherwise could have.
Most of the other founders in my space are in their twenties.
They're able to pour every waking hour into their businesses.
Sometimes I look around and think,
"I'm doing half of what I know I could be doing."
JD probably operates at about eighty percent because after he gets home around five, he'll go back to work later in the evening.
But we've chosen this intentionally.
Mona Raza: Because we want everything.
We want meaningful work.
We want family.
When I look at my own peers from law school, many of them went into big law firms believing that working eighty-hour weeks was simply the only path to becoming partner.
We all worked incredibly hard.
I earned my master's degree in tax while raising children.
I'd drop the girls off, work all day, leave around four o'clock to pick them up, and people would constantly question it.
There were always comments.
"Can't your twelve-year-old take an Uber?"
"Just one more question before you leave."
Sometimes I'd have to bring the girls back to the office with me.
They literally had a place under my desk where they'd sleep.
It was always a juggling act.
But now, when I look around, I realize I'm actually not behind my peers.
Many of them have left big law because the lifestyle simply wasn't sustainable.
They worked incredibly hard and still didn't make partner.
Some developed serious health problems because they never had time to take care of themselves.
Watching that has strengthened my conviction.
The future belongs to people who insist on having healthy boundaries.
Shireen: I completely agree.
But I also think we have to teach younger people how to maintain excellence while having those boundaries.
Lately I've been thinking about mortality in a different way.
As you get older, you become much more aware that your time is limited.
I've started asking myself,
"Does this bring me joy?"
Every day should contain joy.
Not just the promise of joy someday in the future.
Picking Nora up from school brings me joy.
Seeing her face brings me joy.
Even if she's had a bad day, I'm grateful I was there.
I'll never remember everything that was on my to-do list that afternoon.
But I'll always remember seeing my daughter walk out of school.
Mona Raza: Even beyond joy, I think about alignment.
Everything in my life has to align with who I am.
Even something as small as opening a drawer and seeing clothes that don't fit or that I'll never wear anymore.
I get rid of them.
They're not aligned with my life anymore.
Building my technology stack for my business...
That excites me.
It brings me joy.
Shireen: Exactly!
That's how work should feel.
I don't get the Sunday night anxiety anymore.
Owning a business is actually much more stressful than having a job.
You're responsible for payroll.
You're responsible for everything.
But there's so much joy in creating something that's truly yours.
Business is difficult.
Food is difficult.
Retail is difficult.
But when you build something and put it into the world...
That's incredibly meaningful.
For me, one of the most meaningful parts is realizing that I'm sharing my mother's food with other people.
That was never my goal.
But now I think about my mom.
She didn't even know how to cook when she first got married.
She came from a large, loving family where she was the only daughter among five children.
Moving to America meant learning everything from scratch.
Becoming an independent wife and mother.
Learning to cook this incredible food.
None of it came naturally.
She learned all of it.
She's one of the most joyful people I know.
Sometimes I think I'm not just sharing her recipes.
I'm sharing her entire journey.
Mona Raza: Your mom really is one of the most joyful people I've ever met.
Shireen: She truly is.
Sometimes I think I'm not just putting her food into the world—I'm sharing her entire journey.
She came to America as this very young woman who had to reinvent herself.
Food became such a huge part of that transformation.
My mother's response to leaving Kashmir was simple:
She decided she was only going to eat Kashmiri food.
If we went out to eat somewhere, she'd quietly order a baked potato if there wasn't anything else.
She never complained.
She just decided,
"I'm not learning to cook other cuisines."
"I'm not changing what I love."
That feels like a very Kashmiri trait.
Mona Raza: (laughing) It really does.
You know how I actually learned to cook Kashmiri food?
I'd sit in my mother-in-law's kitchen pretending to read a book.
I'd just quietly watch her cook.
She'd tell me one thing, but then I'd notice,
"Wait...you just added something you never mentioned."
I was secretly learning all of her little techniques.
Shireen: Exactly!
That's the real cookbook.
Watching.
Not just reading recipes.
Mona Raza: I absolutely love your journey.
If we're fortunate, our life journey and our career journey grow together.
We keep evolving into the next version of ourselves.
For anyone listening who may be afraid to let go of something...
I really believe the universe rewards you when you move toward what you're aligned with.
You weren't trying to build a legacy.
But look what you've created.
You're honoring where you came from.
Future generations will be able to experience Safia Auntie's recipes because of what you've built.
That's an incredible gift.
I remember you mentioning that you eventually hope to expand beyond Kashmiri cuisine.
Is that still the vision?
Shireen: Absolutely.
We already have fourteen SKUs.
For example, my aunt is Pakistani.
She has an incredible biryani recipe that she actually wrote down for me.
I've made it several times.
It's amazing.
Eventually I want to release that as Auntie's Biryani.
We already have recipes and spice packets waiting in the pipeline.
There are simply so many things we want to create that we're working through the backlog one product at a time.
Being Kashmiri has always made me think differently about India.
Growing up, Kashmir almost felt separate from everything else.
Then, when I was about twenty-one or twenty-two, I traveled throughout India for the first time.
It completely changed my perspective.
Every region felt like its own world.
Different languages.
Different cultures.
Different food.
It made me appreciate just how incredibly diverse India really is.
When you travel through southern India, for example, you realize people often don't even share the same language.
Sometimes English is the only common language people have.
The food diversity absolutely amazed me.
That experience planted a seed.
Originally everyone encouraged me to stay focused exclusively on Kashmiri cuisine.
Of course that's where I started because it's what I know.
It's what my mother taught me.
But my vision has always been much bigger.
I've always loved learning about other cultures and sharing experiences across communities.
I'm in an interfaith marriage.
Even before that, I naturally gravitated toward friendships with people from different backgrounds.
I love discovering what makes us different while also finding what connects us.
That's ultimately what I want Moji Masala to become.
Yes, it begins with Kashmiri food because that's my story.
But I want to celebrate the incredible regional diversity of Indian cuisine.
People sometimes compare Indian food to Italian regional cooking.
I actually think the differences are even greater.
Many Indians are unfamiliar with dishes from other regions.
I've served rogan josh to friends from Mumbai who had never tasted anything like it.
They'd heard of it...
But they'd never experienced authentic Kashmiri rogan josh.
That's incredibly exciting to me.
I want to work with aunties and mothers from every region.
I want their authentic recipes.
I'm already reaching out to Gujarati friends, friends from Mumbai, and others to figure out which recipes would work well in the Moji Masala format.
Mona Raza: And this is one of your bestsellers.
Shireen: Yes.
This is our Tandoori Chicken packet.
Each packet makes one complete dish.
On the back you'll find a shopping list, a QR code, the written recipe, and a cooking video.
Everything is online.
You simply use the entire packet.
Whether you're making chicken curry, gobi, aloo, or another dish, the process is incredibly simple.
Mona Raza: I love that.
You have vegetarian options.
Meat options.
So many different choices.
One thing we almost forgot to talk about is the legal side of building a business.
When you were starting from scratch in a completely new industry, where did you even begin?
Did you trademark everything right away?
Shireen: We definitely wanted to protect the brand.
We registered Moji Masala as a trademark.
We were a little nervous because the word masala is generic, but the full name is distinctive.
"Moji" means "mom" in Kashmiri.
That process was probably the one place where we hired professional help.
It wasn't inexpensive, but we felt it was worth having an attorney handle it properly.
Everything else, though, I learned by asking questions.
With food businesses, it's mostly about making sure you have the correct licenses and permits.
One thing that really surprised me was how helpful local government agencies were.
Whether it was New York or Philadelphia, I'd call the Department of Agriculture or the local food office, and someone would actually answer the phone.
They'd explain exactly what I needed to do.
There was an incredible amount of support available for small businesses.
Mona Raza: That's actually encouraging because I think a lot of people assume starting a business is impossible.
They imagine endless bureaucracy and no one willing to help.
But that's not really been your experience.
Shireen: Not at all.
Of course, there are challenges.
You have to do your homework.
You have to ask questions.
But there are people whose entire job is helping small businesses succeed.
I think that's something more people should know.
You don't have to know everything before you start.
You just have to be willing to learn.
Mona Raza: I love that.
Before we wrap up, where can people find you?
Shireen: The easiest place is our website, MojiMasala.com.
We're also on Instagram at @MojiMasala.
We post recipes, cooking tips, and videos showing exactly how to use the spice packets.
Everything is designed to make cooking approachable, even if you've never made Indian food before.
Mona Raza: I have to say, I've tried these products myself, and I absolutely love them.
They're beautiful, thoughtfully designed, and they truly make authentic Indian cooking accessible.
Thank you so much for being here.
I've loved watching your journey—from Wall Street, to motherhood, to entrepreneurship—and seeing how you've built something that's preserving your family's legacy while helping so many other families gather around the dinner table.
Thank you for sharing your story.
Shireen: Thank you so much for having me.
This was such a wonderful conversation.
I really appreciate it.
Mona Raza: Thanks, everyone, for joining us on Not Your Lawyer.
We'll see you next time.
