From Revolution to Reinvention: Shirin Bezhadi’s Remarkable Journey

An Encore for This Moment: Shirin Behzadi and The Unexpected CEOWith Iran once again commanding attention around the world, this felt like the right time to revisit one of the most remarkable personal stories shared on Franchise Today last year.Shirin Behzadi was born and raised in Iran before the 1979 revolution changed everything. As a young girl, she witnessed upheaval, lost the sense of safety she had grown up with, was arrested twice as a preteen, and ultimately left her family and homeland at just 17 years old. She eventually made her way to Los Angeles, where she worked as a cashier inside a bulletproof gas-station booth while putting herself through college. But even then, Shirin had a vision: someday, she would run a big company.She did.Her journey took her through EY, the CFO suite, entrepreneurship and ultimately Home Franchise Concepts, where she helped build one of franchising’s most successful home-services platforms. Along the way came the Great Recession, a life-threatening brain tumor and a lesson she still carries today: adversity can become a superpower when we learn how to grow through it. Her book, The Unexpected CEO: My Journey from Gas Station Cashier to Billion Dollar CEO, is about possibility—and this encore conversation may be even more meaningful today than when it first aired.