Before she became an Olympic hero, she faced this “invisible obstacle” in corporate America

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Before she was one of Time Magazine’s most influential people, a New York Times best seller, a Barbie doll and an Olympian, Ibtihaj Muhammad was one of many millennials who entered a historically bad job market.

“I graduated in the midst of a recession,” she told LinkedIn News. “This is in 2007 and it was difficult for, I think, a lot of people to find employment.”

Muhammad is right, of course. Months after she graduated from Duke University, where she majored in international relations and African studies, the U.S. entered not just any recession, but the “deepest” economic downturn since the end of World War II. 

As if The Great Recession wasn’t enough, Muhammad suspected another obstacle had been in her way.

“My experience in interviewing in corporate America was often met with pushback, and to have the last name Muhammad, I think, post 9-11, is — it's definitely a hardship,” she said. “There's a lot of obstacles that you face in just combating these often negative stereotypes that people have about people who look like me, who share the same faith.”

Her suspicion soon found supporting evidence.

To help land more job interviews, she stopped using her last name on her résumé. The change “worked,” she said, but it also produced a moment she’s ashamed of. 

“I think that that was a weaker moment in my life, you know, to decide not to use my last name on there, on my résumé, because I had the unfortunate experience of, yes, getting more interviews by using my middle name as opposed to my last name.” 

Research suggests Muhammad is far from the only one who has had a similar experience. A two-year study from the University of Toronto in 2016 found that Asian and Black applicants who altered their names on resumes to conceal their race were more than twice as likely to receive calls for job interviews. 

What happens after those interviews are landed, though, didn’t bring much pleasure to Muhammad.

“Those people who were not offering me interviews to those companies, who didn't want someone with the last name Muhammad working at their company — when I arrived, I had on a hijab, right? So I wasn't offered the job and that's — that's difficult. It's difficult to wrap your mind around, but I think that those are one of the harsh realities of being Black in America, you know, being Muslim in America and understanding that systemic racism exists.”

An Olympic icon

Over the past half decade, Muhammad’s star has risen dramatically.

In 2016, the New Jersey native became the first Muslim American woman to compete in hijab at the Summer Olympics, where she won a bronze medal. Since then, her greatest career highlights have all revolved around pride.

In 2017, she was at the center of a Nike ad campaign, promoting the first line of the brand’s “pro hijab.” Her children’s book, The Proudest Blue, a New York Times best seller, tells the story of a young girl’s first day at school in hijab. In 2019, she was named among Sports Illustrated’s “Fashionable 50,” a feature which highlighted Muhammad’s line, Louella, self-described as a provider of modest clothing for women. And most recently, she created a video series that highlights the experiences of female Muslim athletes.

The road to all of these moments, the moments that made her an icon, was paved by that unsuccessful job search all those years earlier. 

“I think that that experience in graduating during a recession, being a woman who wears hijab post 9-11, and also being black in America, I think that that pushed me into sport. You know, I started training again.” 

Check out the video above with Ibtihaj Muhammad to learn more about how she rose to Olympic stardom and entrepreneurship, and click here for more stories about athletes and their second careers.