By Nora Garg
Science Leadership Academy

At the Thread Bar in Philadelphia’s tony Rittenhouse Square neighborhood, Bollywood music plays on a loop and the multilingual banter of employees buzzes through the shop as strings of customers filter in and out.

Sadia Afreen, whose family emigrated from Bangladesh when she was 11, and Harinder Kaur, a native of Punjab, India, are partners in a now-thriving eyebrow threading business. Kaur immigrated to Philadelphia in 2012 and was pregnant during their first year of business. 

“I had never been anywhere but Punjab,” she said. “I’d only been to the airport once, to drop somebody off. It was hard to adjust to this new environment; I wanted to go back. But when I started working and meeting all these amazing people, I realized there was something here. Now, we have three locations open and successfully running.”

Afreen and Kaur are among the many determined immigrant businesswomen making their mark in Philadelphia. These entrepreneurs change their lives as well as contribute to the local economy and enrich the cultural landscape.

“They bring up their little taste of the world here, and it’s almost like we get the best of everything,” said Layla El Tannir, director of entrepreneurship at the Welcoming Center, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit that assists new immigrants. “We get the best of their culture. We get hardworking individuals. We get a new product or service that isn’t readily available. And without that, you’d be missing that character, and you would be missing that energy.” 

These entrepreneurs make a big financial impact as well. About 75% of the city’s revenue is generated from small businesses and job creation, said Narasimha Shenoy, head of the Asian American Chamber of Commerce of Greater Philadelphia. That comes to $7.4 billion.

Immigrants in Philadelphia are 43% more likely to start their own business than residents born here, Shenoy added. Of these immigrant-led businesses, 38% are run by women.

Many Philadelphians would agree that Cristina Martinez, winner of the 2022 James Beard Award for best chef in the Mid-Atlantic region and owner of highly successful South Philly Barbacoa and Casa Mexico restaurants, has added greatly to the flavor of the city.

But Martinez, who was fired as a pastry chef because she was an undocumented immigrant and turned to selling food from a pushcart, is now also an employer as well as an advocate for other immigrants and immigrant businesswomen.

“The most important legacy is for women to see that it is possible to start a business, whether or not you speak English,” said Martinez. “If I did it, other people can do it better, especially women who have the knowledge and were born here. I hope my work shows them that women can grow. We can run a business. We can sustain and support the community.”

Some female immigrants with professional qualifications in their native lands may find those fields closed to them here. Over 2 million highly skilled immigrants in the United States are either unemployed or underemployed due to cultural and linguistic barriers or because they cannot afford the costly process of attaining certification, according to Ballard Brief, a student-led research library at Brigham Young University.

For those women, as well as some of their undocumented sisters, entrepreneurship is often the answer.

One example is a West Philadelphia entrepreneur and undocumented immigrant whose main expertise is in cooking and catering. Here since 2015, the woman, who is not being identified due to her immigration status, has been her family’s main financial support, helping to pay for her ailing husband’s medical care and her daughter’s education at a state college. Now, she and her daughter are business partners.

“I help with the food; my daughter helps with the money and translation,” said the entrepreneur in her native language, Hindi. “We’re self-run.”

And as women like her work, they provide services and experiences that enrich their adopted city.

“They actually enhance the availability of the options around services that Americans wouldn’t have had access to,” said El Tannir at the Welcoming Center.

She said about 17% of the women in each cohort at the Welcoming Center are pursuing paths to starting their own small businesses related to personal care and beauty services.

Any given day, the three eyebrow-threading shops opened by partners Sadia Afreen and Harinder Kaur are bustling with happy customers. Through their hard work, an American Dream that once seemed improbable is coming true.

“We are two immigrant women running a successful eyebrow threading store,” said Afreen, who also helps support family back in her native Bangladesh. “Some women are running clinics or nail salons. I get to see more people like me running their businesses and growing. But all together, we’ve allowed ourselves to build something for ourselves.”