What Video Teams Can Learn from Nadah Feteih About Inclusive Storytelling
Nadah Feteih is the founder of Ma’wa Collective, a travel and adventure company created around the needs of Muslim women. Her background spans software engineering, privacy engineering, community work, and entrepreneurship. She describes her work through one recurring question: how do we build things that genuinely improve people’s lives?
Beverly Boy’s applications below interpret her community-building principles for employee stories, community campaigns, recruitment films, and customer interviews.
Feteih’s five principles are to increase access, invest in community-led organizations, broaden representation, create spaces where people do not have to explain themselves, and elevate lived experiences.
Remove Barriers Before the Shoot
Feteih’s first principle is to increase access. She points to practical barriers such as cost, equipment, transportation, and simply not knowing where to begin. Removing those barriers allows more people to participate.
Video teams should think about access before casting or scheduling interviews.
Can participants reach the location easily? Is the filming environment appropriate for the people being featured? Do interview subjects understand what will happen on set? Are translation, accessibility, or scheduling needs being considered early enough?
A production may have strong intentions but still make participation difficult through the way it is organized.
The producer’s job is to identify those barriers before they become reasons people cannot take part.
Work With People Closest to the Story
Feteih’s second principle is to invest in community-led organizations because the people closest to a community often understand its needs best.
That principle fits video development closely.
If a campaign involves a specific community, department, profession, or customer group, the creative team should not rely only on assumptions made outside that group.
Bring knowledgeable people into the planning process.
They can help flag language that feels inaccurate, suggest questions the creative team may not think to ask, identify missing context, and point out details that may affect how the finished piece is received.
That does not mean handing over every production decision. It means gathering better information before those decisions are made.
Show a Wider Range of People
Feteih’s third principle is broader representation. She notes that marketing helps shape what people believe is possible, and that seeing people like themselves represented can affect whether they feel they belong.
For video teams, representation begins with who appears on screen.
A company story built only around executives may miss the employees who experience the organization differently. A customer campaign may feel narrow if every subject comes from the same background or tells the same type of story.
Broader representation does not mean filling a casting checklist.
It means asking whose experience is relevant to the story and whether the finished piece reflects the people the organization actually serves or employs.
That decision should happen during development, not after the edit is nearly finished.
Create Interview Conditions Where People Can Be Themselves
Feteih’s fourth principle is creating spaces where people do not have to explain themselves. She describes affinity spaces as places where people can build confidence and belonging before entering environments where they may be underrepresented.
There is a clear production lesson here.
Interview subjects usually give stronger material when they are not spending the entire session wondering whether they fit the expected mold.
Producers can help by explaining the process clearly, using respectful prompts, avoiding assumptions, and giving subjects enough room to answer in their own words.
A strong interview does not require someone to simplify their identity into a slogan.
Ask about experience.
What happened? What did it mean? What changed? What do they want others to understand?
Those questions usually create more useful material than asking someone to speak for an entire group.
Let People Tell Their Own Stories
Feteih’s fifth principle is to give people opportunities to tell their own stories instead of speaking on their behalf. She argues that lived experience can change perceptions in ways statistics alone cannot.
This is especially important in documentary-style corporate and nonprofit video.
A narrator can explain what a program does. A graphic can show the number of people reached. But an individual describing what the experience meant to them gives the audience something different.
Producers should create space for that voice instead of using interviews only to confirm lines already written into the script.
That may mean changing the planned edit when a subject provides a stronger explanation than the original copy.
The story should still serve the project goal, but real experience should not be reduced to background material when it is the strongest part of the piece.
Understand the Difference Between Presence and Belonging
Feteih makes an important distinction between diversity and inclusion. Diversity is about who is present. Inclusion is about whether people actually feel that they belong once they arrive.
For production teams, that difference applies both on screen and behind the camera.
Casting people from different backgrounds is only one step. The production process also matters.
Can crew members raise concerns? Are interview subjects treated as contributors rather than visual proof of representation? Are different perspectives considered during development and review?
The goal is not simply to show diversity. It is to create conditions where different voices can contribute meaningfully to the final work.
Measure More Than Reach
In the interview, Feteih reports that nearly 2,000 women have traveled with Ma’wa Collective. She also assesses impact through what happens afterward. She points to friendships, confidence, and people going on to travel independently as signs that the community is working.
Video teams can take the same approach.
Views and completion rates matter, but they may not tell the whole story.
An internal film may succeed because employees better understand a program. A recruitment piece may attract applicants who understand the culture more clearly. A community video may work because the people featured believe the final edit represents them accurately.
Define those outcomes before production begins.
Team Beverly Boy’s Takeaway
The strongest production lesson in Feteih’s approach is that representation should begin before the camera turns on.
It starts with access, who is invited into the planning process, whose perspective shapes the questions, and whether interview subjects have enough space to speak for themselves.
For video teams, inclusion works best when it is part of the production process rather than something added to the final cut.
Conclusion
Nadah Feteih’s principles offer video teams a practical framework for more thoughtful storytelling.
Remove barriers. Work with people closest to the subject. Broaden representation. Create interview conditions where people can speak comfortably. Let lived experience carry the story when it is stronger than a prepared message.
Those choices can help video teams create work that feels more accurate, respectful, and connected to the people it represents.
This article is based on an interview originally published by Authority Magazine. Read the full interview here.
