Turning Dreams into Reality with Hard Work Ft. Gul Jabeen

In this conversation I sit down with Gul Jabeen, lead ML engineer at Hyly.AI, and we walk through a journey that took her from writing code at 13 in Islamabad to fighting burnout in Germany and deciding to return home. This is not just a career story. It is about how hard you have to work, how lonely it can get, and how essential it is to know who you are before everything else.

Coding at 13, before anyone told her it was possible

Gul’s story starts in Islamabad. She went to IMCG F-10/4, and in 8th grade, a computer science course flicked a switch. “I started coding when I was 13 years old,” she tells me. There was not a lot of awareness around computer science back then. Her classmates had no idea what she was chasing, but Gul’s mind was always analytical. She just knew she wanted to create something. Her father was supportive from day one. “My father was always like, do whatever you want to do,” she says. That quiet backing gave her the space to pick computer science at COMSATS and later pursue a Master’s in data science and AI in Germany.

Germany, odd jobs, and the therapy that helped her face herself

When Gul first landed in Hanover, the jump from Islamabad hit hard. She needed to support herself, so she worked at a factory, a newspaper factory, a makeup brand. Ten-hour shifts. White shirts, white boots, standing on hard floors. She remembers feeling like everyone there was working just as hard. “If they can do it, I can do it,” she told herself. But the loneliness crept in. She was alone with her thoughts, her worries, her future. “I was feeling very alone,” she admits. “I was stuck and I was so negative.” She reached a point where she could not function. She saw a therapist at her university. The therapist told her, “Great things will happen to you, you are very smart, you are very hardworking.” That conversation, along with the harsh gift of solitude, taught her emotional intelligence. She learned that being alone forces you to listen to your own self, and sometimes that is the only way to move forward.

Leaving behind a dream for love

After years in Germany, Gul had built a life. She had a job as an IT consultant, worked with big companies like Bayer and MIT, and then the pandemic hit. She got through COVID alone in a new city. When she finally visited Pakistan, her family started asking the inevitable: come back, get married. She was 27. She knew her then-fiancé from her COMSATS days. He was a law graduate from Manchester and she deeply loved him. But moving back to Pakistan meant leaving behind her hard-earned independence and her career in Germany. It was a gut-wrenching decision. “I was just crying and crying,” she says. A kind stranger on the plane saw her tears and said something that stuck: “You don’t know yet why Allah has made this decision for you. Maybe after five or ten years you will thank Allah for this.” It took Gul a full year to settle back, to stop feeling the shock of being back in an environment where, even if nobody imposed terms, the culture asked you to shrink a little. She told me, “Shadi is not everything. First figure out yourself that who you are, and then maybe give a chance to marriage.” That clarity is the small thing that matters most in this entire conversation.

Burnout, firing, and the art of leading without micromanaging

Back in Pakistan, Gul threw herself into work. Two full-time remote jobs, a new marriage, a wedding that was a beautiful, big affair, but her body said stop. She experienced a severe burnout episode. “I started crying so much,” she said, describing a moment at a family event where she just broke down. Her husband told her to calm down, promised things would get better. Soon after, she was fired from one job. It was a wrongful fire, she says, but it was the break she desperately needed. She took four months off, reassessed everything, and then joined Hyly.AI as a lead ML engineer. Now she manages a remote team, and she does it differently. “I don’t do micromanagement,” she says. “I give them space to learn things.” She wants her team to breathe, to make mistakes and grow. That is a kind of leadership born from her own exhaustion.

Why AI education needs more desi girls

Gul is now building a tech blog and YouTube series to make AI accessible. “I want to be a voice of this,” she says. She notices that there are not many girls in Pakistan talking about artificial intelligence with such candour. Her content will be for everyone: engineers, doctors, anyone curious. She explains that people are scared of AI, thinking it is something to be avoided, but ignoring it means you lose the ability to tell when it is being used for the wrong reasons. “You cannot stay behind and say no I am not learning,” she insists. And she is right. Tools like ChatGPT are already changing how we edit podcasts, generate captions, and run businesses. Gul’s blog is her way of bringing that awareness home, with cultural context and a desi lens.

This conversation reminded me why I do this podcast. Gul’s story is a raw testament to hard work, but it never glosses over the tears. She shows us that it is okay to leave a country for love, okay to burn out, okay to start again. Financial independence is important, she says, but so is emotional independence. Do not rely on others for your emotions. Figure out who you are first. That is the real dream turned into reality.