Frazer Hay in conversation with Nadia Hashimi, as part of 10 Stories for 10 Years.
Nadia Hashimi joined our conversation online from Canada. Despite the digital distance, her presence was immediate: kind, wise, and quietly inspiring. Her story speaks of a remarkable journey through resilience and determination, and I came away feeling fortunate to have met her. A former World Bank specialist and CEO/co-founder of S&N Consultancy, Nadia brings over twenty years of experience in policy, education, and cultural heritage protection. She speaks multiple languages, bridges cultural gaps, and calls Canada her second home.
To understand Nadia’s dedication to heritage, one must look at her journey through education and transition. As a teenager in Afghanistan, Nadia was on track to finish school early. She was an exceptional student, the kind for whom ‘98 per cent felt like failure’. Her formal schooling was interrupted by the shifting political landscape of the 1990s. In response, her mother, a lifelong advocate for girls’ education, established a secret school in their home. When the family were eventually forced to flee Afghanistan, they arrived in Peshawar with almost nothing: a colour television and a few Afghan rugs.
Those rugs became the foundation of a new chapter. Nadia’s mother sold them to rent a house, buy blackboards and chairs, and open a Girls’ High School for Afghan refugees. Nadia, still a teenager, became a teacher, translator, negotiator, and problem-solver. By night, the family wove carpets to survive; by day, they built a future for their community.
When Afghanistan reopened in 2002, Nadia returned with her family. Their old house had been destroyed, but they began again. She worked for CARE, helped rebuild a life, and soon became one of the first Afghan girls to receive a scholarship to study in the United States, where she began to see cultural heritage as a vital tool for international understanding.
Through those experiences, Nadia began to understand cultural heritage as a form of correction. She wanted people to know Afghanistan not only through war, but through its culture, stories, crafts, histories and humanity. ‘I wanted to present the good side of Afghanistan,’ she said. ‘To tell people about the people, culture, life struggles and how similar we all are as human beings.’ This philosophy defines her partnership with the CPF, which began in 2017.
One memory connects Nadia’s journey unexpectedly to the British Council. During the political shifts in Kabul in the 1990s, her father salvaged a collection of British Council books that had been scattered from the chaos. These became a lifeline; her sister used them to teach Nadia and her brother English. The foundation was so strong that Nadia was fast-tracked to level four in her first placement test. ‘I learnt the English language from those British Council books,’ she said. It is a remarkable thread: books found in a moment of transition becoming tools of language, possibility and eventual international work.
Nadia’s direct involvement with the Cultural Protection Fund began when she was approached to help rescue a collection of historically significant paintings damaged during past periods of upheaval. Her contribution, anchored by the expertise of S&N Consultancy, was defined by technical discipline; in a context where the impulse was to begin immediate restoration on 150 paintings, Nadia advocated for a phased, evidence-based approach. By restructuring the project around a rigorous condition assessment, mapping damage, quantifying risk, and identifying technical requirements, she ensured the work was not just well-intentioned but professionally responsible and logistically sound. This practical clarity became the project’s centre, enabling a powerful collaboration between the FCCS, as lead partner, Nadia’s team at S&N Consultancy, and UK-based specialists Elsa Guerreiro and Richard Mulholland. Together, they worked in close coordination with the Afghan National Gallery (ANG) staff, who received specialised training throughout the restoration process.
