What is your biggest struggle right now?
I just started a challenging job at a huge international media company which has been my dream job for years. Right now my biggest struggle is trying to fit in while working from home full time and not being able to see the team at the office.
What and who inspires you?
Seeing people do incredible and good things inspires me so much. I was just watching David Attenborough’s documentary A Life on Our Planet. This man spent a lifetime exploring our natural world. Today, at 93 he did a documentary on the urgency of saving our planet. He’s such an inspiration, everyone should watch his documentary to understand the need to protect our environment. It’s people like him who make me believe in humanity.
Worst and Best Memory?
My best memory is more a feeling than a specific memory. It’s a feeling I have when I’m home, in my hometown, Carthage, on a hot august afternoon, back from a jump in the sea at Les Thermes d’Antonin. It is a small beach covered with rocks where my mom and her friends gather every summer chatting about politics in their perfect bikinis and big hats. And then, here I am, wet salty hair, picking up figs from my grand mother’s fridge, sitting next to her all afternoon and listening to her stories about how she came to Tunis from Corsica when she was 18, how she fell in love with my grandfather and never left since.
Worst memory has to be when my grandmother died and I couldn’t be at her funeral with my family because I was living in New York and couldn’t travel back to Tunisia from so far. I remember walking on New York’s cobble streets, wandering around in tears.
I was not able to say goodbye to someone that meant so much to me.
What advice will you give?
It’s very hard today to find your own voice, your own identity.
We are all surrounded by so many images of what we are supposed to be, need to be or look like. Luckily I grew up in the nineties, we didn’t have all of this pressure from social media. We were playing Super Mario on our Nintendo 64 and that was the closest we would get to a screen.
My advice would be “don’t be so hard yourself”. There’s a quote from a movie I love that says “Dazzle them with the basics”, it’s all there ! You don’t need too much in life, be natural, surround yourself with true friendship and honest people, it’s the key to a happy life.
Me and my girlfriends recently decided to delete all instagram accounts that were making us feel bad about ourselves and it’s been such a relief !
How would you like to introduce yourself ?
My name is Dora, I’m 29 but people say I look 18 (which is fine by me). I grew up in Tunisia, I’ve been living in Paris for 7 years. I have a passion for movies and whales.
