At the peak of her career, she left her home in Pakistan to travel to Iowa.

Cyma Zulfiqar Saeed, the most acclaimed copywriter in Pakistan, now lectures in the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication, can be found in a small office in 209 Hamilton Hall.

“Advertising is it for her. It’s clear she loves advertising and she knows what better advertising is,” said John Eighmey, professor and chairman of the Greenlee School. “That is the fundamental reason she was hired. We saw promise in her.”

Saeed teaches advertising campaigns and visual communication in the Greenlee School but she has had several unique experiences before landing her job at Iowa State.

Born in Lahore, Pakistan, Saeed began writing early on. By age 12, she wrote and directed street plays for local kids. As the years passed, she wrote for news magazines and newsletters.

“I really had my heart set on journalism,” she said.

Her family dissuaded her from journalism because for a woman in Pakistan, covering politics and controversial topics could be dangerous. She eventually set her heart on another love — advertisement copywriting.

She began in 1989 when she launched Pakistan’s first Proctor and Gamble advertising campaign. With the support of trusting clients, Saeed went on to launch a controversial ad for Brooke Bond Tea. The ad followed the “edgy” and daring form of copywriting she promotes in her classes at Iowa State.

Without directly mentioning the tea, the ad showed a mother and son drinking it. The son spoke to his mother about his girlfriend and told her he would love his girlfriend for a simple reason: “She makes the best cup of tea in the world.”

The advertisement broke one of Pakistan’s unwritten rules; youth aren’t supposed to talk with their parents about things like girlfriends, boyfriends or sex. The results proved to be phenomenal and the tea became the No. 1 seller in the country.

Despite her numerous successes, Saeed wasn’t destined to stay in Pakistan forever.

By 2000, Saeed and her husband of seven years, Kamran, a native of Karachi, Pakistan, was offered an engineering job in Iowa, a location completely unfamiliar to Saeed.

“Well, I had heard of [Iowa] but I didn’t really know anything about it,” she said. A friend teased her, saying she would become a farm girl and live in a village in Iowa.

Saeed said she was worried mostly about her career.

“I was considered the best in my country. I was at the peak of my career when I left,” she said. “But I’m so adventurous, I don’t scare easily. I like change.”

Saeed and her husband made Iowa their home in August of 2000.

“It was the first time I was in the U.S. and able to be truly aware of where I was,” she said.

Since moving, Saeed has made Iowa her home. She said she is so comfortable here with her husband and children Ali, 4, and Shehrazad, 11 months, that she doesn’t feel like she is in a foreign country.

The major differences Saeed has seen between Pakistan and the United States have been the greater amount of corruption in Pakistan’s government and that, unlike families in the United States, families in Pakistan tend to live with their extended family.

Saeed said she hopes to work on advertising campaigns in the United States but is focusing on her teaching career at Iowa State for now.

Chad Bartlett, senior in advertising, took a visual communications class with Saeed last semester and is enrolled in her Advertising 334, Advertising Creativity, class.

“She’s always up for a discussion. Class is very open,” he said. “You can see that she has a strong sense of motivation and she always brings that out. She just wants to help us get the most out of what she knows.”