6 Questions for Leila Ismailova

Leila Ismailova began her professional career at the age of 15 as a broadcasting star in Belarus, the Russian-neighboring Eastern European country that plays home to 9.3 million citizens. She continued in the role for 10 years, she says, before reaching what she felt was a “professional ceiling” and beginning a journey that led to Web3.

“I remember ​my audacity as a child, just sneaking into the buildings with ​newspapers and magazines — it was called the House of Press,” Ismailova recalls in an interview with Cointelegraph. “I would handwrite my stories and sneak into the building — because I didn’t have a pass — by making up stories that I was someone’s granddaughter, or by just going in when someone else entered. And I would find the doors that said ‘editor’ or ‘editor-in-chief,’ and I would just walk in and give them my articles. People smiled, and I’m sure they felt I was naive, but I felt they also had some respect for me doing this work.”

Her renegade news career led to television in a matter of years. She joined the country’s First National ​Channel at the age of 15, where she started on a show that covered news and culture for younger viewers.

“My first ​audition went horribly,” Ismailova says. “I turned purple. I was thinking really fast, but they still wanted me to come for the second round.”

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Ismailova moved to the United States in 2016, setting off what she calls a “season of migration” for her family, including her brother, Bahram, and sister, Esmira. Bahram is a serial tech entrepreneur whose inventions include Peech App and Yope, among many others, while Esmira is an author whose published works include On the Shores of Bosphorus. (You won’t find it in English yet, so don’t spend too much time scouring Amazon.)

Ismailova’s and her siblings’ success came despite hardship. Their father died when they were children (Bahram was just 1), fighting for Azerbaijan in the country’s war with Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

“It happened very abruptly,” Ismailova says. “Of course, no one planned for it, so we went very fast from being a well-off family living in the capital of Baku to being a very scared family. We were pretty much on our own in a country that was going through the war with Armenia and, on top of that, separating from the Soviet Union. It was a very harsh time for everybody.”

Ismailova says that experience inspired her to launch a charity during her broadcast career that offered mentoring for orphans, an activity she would like to resume in the future.

“It seemed like these girls, even though the government provided very simple basics for them to start life, didn’t have parental guidance,” Ismailova recalls. “It seemed like a lot of orphan girls were insecure because no one told them they were beautiful. Our goal was to create that guidance and to give them a confidence boost. […] For me, it was very important to do, and I was so lucky that I had a chance and a bit of influence. Right now, I miss it very much.”

Today, she’s a Web3 veteran after spending three years at Artisant, a digital fashion brand she co-founded — inspired, in part, by her career in journalism. “As a child, I didn’t have access to a lot of beautiful dresses,” Ismailova says. “But I always appreciated the elegant and beautiful part of fashion, and when I watched TV, I always saw TV hosts and red carpets. It always looked stunning.”

Ismailova left Artisant in July to launch a new chapter of her career as a consultant for digital-savvy fashion brands. “I’m sort of coming back to reality,” Ismailova explains. “Artisant was a digital fashion brand, but there was no physical product.”

1. You moved from Belarus, where you were a TV journalist, to the United States. What’s the story behind that?

I’m the only one from my family who moved, at first. I opened the “season of migration” for my family, as right after I moved, my sister moved, and then my brother. He didn’t just move — he ran away in August 2020, right after the Belarusian presidential election, when they started hunting people down. He had to run. His two co-founders were arrested.