I always say the Nubank story was very unlikely. It was a very low probability event. Again. We were going after these very big incumbent banks. Everybody told me, you know, you're Colombian. You have no idea what you're doing in Brazil. They're going to crush you. Like, don't. Just don't do it. And I did it mostly because everybody told me I couldn't do it. And so, if somebody tells me I can't do something, I want to go do it.

I was very well organized in my things. I am an exceptional worker, not only a risk taker. And I was not in competition with anybody. Many people died because they were in competition.

Our young should prepare to seek their fortunes in this golden age. It is silly to moan that properties and cars are going out of their reach. They will never be out of reach of those who seize their opportunities. Of course those on profit sharing schemes and stock options will do better than those on salaries. But even those on salaries will have their salaries double in the next 10 years of high growth. The big winners will be those who find a vein of gold and dig it out. But you have to work to find it and dig it out. Those who bemuse and befuddle themselves into believing the great opportunities are already behind them will regret it when they see their more discerning and perceptive contemporaries prosper.

However, I should say that the education system in Iran is not the way people might imagine here. As a graduate student at Harvard, I had to explain quite a few times that I was allowed to attend a university as a woman in Iran. While it is true that boys and girls go to separate schools up to high school, this does not prevent them from participating say in the Olympiads or the summer camps.

I look for how to get out of it. I try to use here [points to her head]. I tried to read, I tried to talk to others. I tried my best to get out of it. I had lots of times climbing one Everest to find that there is a bigger Everest, but don’t you find your life like this too?

It is possible to be a good scientist, a good mother and have a family and even bake a cake.

First of all, I believe that the results of science should be fully given to the community. Fully. Absolutely. And all types of competition such as who did it first and “I cannot tell him because he will copy me” and so on – these are not arguments. Society financed this science, if not directly, then the education and the way I got there, so society should get back what I found. It is not my finding. In this, I am not very popular, I must say.

Oh ya, I doubted more than expected. I had doubts all the time. The way was extremely, extremely difficult. … At one point I had to describe what I am doing to a person who is a great intellectual but not a scientist, and I told him what we felt is that we are climbing mountains in order to reach the climax – and these mountains are like the Everest, the biggest most difficult to climb – only to find out that there is another mountain waiting behind it to be climbed afterwards. So every climbing was an achievement but there was a bigger problem behind it or above it. I had lots of minutes that I didn't expect, but I thought science in general and this science particularly is worth the effort – even if we would never get the ultimate result.

But you know that there are so many people that are equal to us or better that didn’t get the prize. You cannot go round the whole world and ask “are you better than me?”

I like reading, I like swimming.I go snorkeling if I can. But not because I’m stuck, but because I enjoy them. And when I am swimming or whatever, I find I have more time to think.