Dr Kaly Jaff operates one of the most successful aesthetic clinics in Scotland. While many people assume she had a privileged upbringing she actually came to this country as a refugee. In her new podcast she discusses this.
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00:00The podcast, I wanted to give a background into my life because as I'm becoming more and more well-known in the industry,
00:10I think I get a lot of people asking me, obviously in the chair, where I come from, what I'm doing,
00:17and people are always really surprised to know that I'm not born from here, I didn't have any privileges in my life,
00:26I experienced quite a lot of racism when I was growing up, and I had loads and loads of setbacks,
00:32but it didn't stop me from wanting to achieve what I always imagined I would have,
00:37and I have a lot of patients that come in whose children are now going into their university careers,
00:44or they're starting to do their exams, and I get a lot of people wanting to do work experience here,
00:49and I thought it's really nice that mothers, but also younger children look up to me,
00:56and I wanted to give them my story, that I wasn't, I didn't have it easy, I wasn't privileged,
01:02I couldn't even speak the language, I was eight, and nothing's going to stop you,
01:07so that was the idea behind the podcast, it was just to give a snippet of my life in the background,
01:14I did by no means think it was going to be big, it was really just to get my story out,
01:18for the 50 patients that I thought would listen to it, and it's really taken off, and I'm so humbled by it,
01:25but it's to go all the way back to 1988 when I was born in Kurdistan,
01:31and the second Gulf War was starting, and my parents had to leave,
01:35and I think it's such a poignant story to tell, because history is repeating itself,
01:40it's happening again with what we're seeing with Israel and Gaza,
01:44and there's a lot of opinions about refugees and blocking borders,
01:49and then there was the general election, and you have these conversations amongst your friends,
01:54and your family, and patients, and I think, kind of like aesthetics,
01:59there is a really negative stigma with refugees as well,
02:03that nobody would put their children somewhere unsafe that we would think,
02:09like a lorry or a boat, to flee if it wasn't safer than where they were,
02:14nobody wants to leave the comfort of their own home, they're forced to do that,
02:19so I wanted to kind of tell a story that there was a happy ending,
02:23because that was me, that was me 30 years ago,
02:27and I'm here now, and I'm safe, and I'm protected,
02:31and I'm in a country that I love, and I give back,
02:34and the country's given me so many opportunities as well,
02:37and I just thought it was a good time to get my story out.