We’re looking forward to introducing you to Mona Bavar. Check out our conversation below.
Mona, a huge thanks to you for investing the time to share your wisdom with those who are seeking it. We think it’s so important for us to share stories with our neighbors, friends and community because knowledge multiples when we share with each other. Let’s jump in: What’s more important to you—intelligence, energy, or integrity?
Integrity matters most to me. Intelligence can spark ideas, and energy can move them forward, but integrity is what ensures they’re meaningful and aligned with values that last. It’s the foundation that gives purpose to the other two. With integrity at the core, intelligence becomes wisdom, and energy becomes impact.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
As an Iranian immigrant, I grew up between cultures, always searching for places that felt like home. The table was one of them. It has always been a place where food, stories, and laughter stitched people together, no matter where we came from. That memory stayed with me, and years later it became DLISH, my way of creating gifts and experiences that do more than impress. They hold meaning. A glass, a bottle of wine, a curated evening, all vessels of memory, ways of turning ordinary exchanges into lasting connections.
That same search for connection is what pushed me into another, very different space: artificial intelligence. With BlueApples.ai, I work with entrepreneurs and creatives who want to use AI without losing their voice. I’ve seen how easy it is to drown in generic noise the moment automation enters the room. My work is about protecting identity, imagination, and the human edge that makes someone unforgettable.
On paper, DLISH and BlueApples might look like two separate ventures, one rooted in taste and design, the other in technology – both come from the same thread of my own story. They’re born from curiosity, from navigating life between worlds, and from the belief that what matters most in life and in business is staying connected to yourself, to others, and to the work that carries your name.
Okay, so here’s a deep one: What’s a moment that really shaped how you see the world?
When my family left Iran, I was seven years old. Overnight, everything I knew, the language, the streets, even the smell of food in the air, was replaced by a world that felt foreign. As a child, I remember sitting at the table in our new home, trying to piece together a sense of belonging from fragments – my mother cooking the dishes she grew up with, my father telling stories of home, me listening for clues about who I was in this new place.
That experience shaped the way I see the world. I learned early that identity isn’t fixed instead, it’s something you carry, lose, reclaim, and remake. It’s why the table has become such an anchor in my work. I started DLISH as a way of creating gifts and experiences that are really about belonging, about bringing people and cultures together across borders and differences.
I carry that same lesson into the future with BlueApples.ai, helping people use AI without losing their voice, without forgetting the essence they carry with them.
That moment of displacement taught me that connection is everything. Without it, we’re unmoored. With it, we can make a home anywhere.
What did suffering teach you that success never could?
Suffering has been my most honest teacher. Success can be intoxicating. It makes you feel seen, validated, and powerful, but it rarely asks you to look inward. Suffering does. When my family left Iran, when I struggled with belonging, when I carried debt that felt crushing, or when heartbreak hollowed me out, those were the moments that stripped me of pretense. They forced me to see who I was without the titles, without the applause.
What suffering taught me is humility, empathy, and the strength that comes from starting again. It showed me that resilience isn’t about never falling, it’s about learning how to carry yourself differently when you stand back up. It gave me the ability to sit across from someone else in pain and truly understand them, to listen without judgment, to connect beyond the surface.
Success never demanded that of me. Suffering did. And though I wouldn’t choose it, I know it’s the soil where depth, compassion, and real creativity grow.
Alright, so if you are open to it, let’s explore some philosophical questions that touch on your values and worldview. What truths are so foundational in your life that you rarely articulate them?
One truth I carry is that connection is the only thing that gives life meaning. It sounds simple, almost obvious, which is why I rarely say it out loud. But everything I’ve lived – leaving Iran as a child, learning to belong in a place that wasn’t mine, rebuilding when things fell apart – has shown me that without connection, nothing holds.
It’s what drives DLISH. A gift, a table, a shared meal. They’re not about luxury or presentation, they’re about creating a moment where people feel less alone. It’s also what drives my work with AI. I don’t see it as a threat, but rather as a tool that can either disconnect us further or, if used intentionally, help us create more space for imagination and human expression.
This truth is so innate that I don’t always name it. But it’s there, shaping everything I do. It’s the belief that success without connection is hollow, and that the work that lasts is the work that brings people closer to themselves and to each other.
Okay, we’ve made it essentially to the end. One last question before you go. Are you doing what you were born to do—or what you were told to do?
When I started university, I chose dentistry because it seemed like the sensible path. A career that promised stability, something respectable, something safe. But the further I went, the more I felt the weight of it. I struggled with the studies, forcing myself through courses I had no love for, trying to believe that security would be enough. It took nearly ten years to face the truth that safety was keeping me small.
What I was meant to do was something else entirely. It has always been about connection, about creating experiences that bring people together and ideas that feel alive. DLISH was born from that impulse, rooted in the memory of how a table once made me feel at home and in my own experience of moving between cultures. Each gift, each experience, is a way of bridging those worlds, showing how food, design, and story can dissolve distance. BlueApples grew from the same place, a desire to help people use technology without losing themselves, to bridge human imagination with machine intelligence.
I know now that the world is quick to hand you a script. If you don’t write your own, you disappear into theirs. It took time, detours, and doubt to claim mine. But today, I am finally doing the work I was born to do, and it feels unmistakably mine.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://dlish.us/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dlish.us/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dlish/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@dlish6566
