An hour’s conversation with Amy Roko is a roller coaster ride. First, the things she does not reveal. Her real name? “Can’t tell you.” Her face? “No chance bro, never, not even for $10m.” Okay, easier stuff. Where did she study? “Too much detail.” Hmm. How about where was she born? “That would give it all away.”
To be fair, there is plenty to give away. The sometimes weird but quite wonderful world of Roko has seen the 29-year-old niqab wearing Saudi woman become a social media sensation, already worth millions of dollars. Nearly 2 million followers hang on her every word, big brands queue up for paid endorsements, and Roko has – without ever trying – become a cultural icon and role model for millions of Arab women.
Yes, she wears a veil and never reveals anything about her private life. Yet she has shown she can be a massively successful businesswoman – who when she is not making comedy or rap videos, is more likely to be seen in Nobu with a copy of the Financial Times. Fast talking (she calls me ‘bro’ six times), unable to sit still for five minutes, witty, intelligent (and adept when it comes to discussing the latest trends in crypto), there is nothing Roko is not afraid to say, try, or do.
“I want to be the one that can do it all. Yes, it is a cliché, but I want to break that glass ceiling. I am Saudi female who wears the niqab but look what I can do – I can make a lot of money and be very successful,” she says.
Success has come relatively fast for Roko, but her journey is an unconventional as unexpected. After school, she graduated with a degree in medical sciences, before taking a routine job in a hospital. Everything was routine – work, traditional family, and the start of a life journey that she had seen all her friends make many times before. Until a bus journey (yes, you read that right), changed her life.
“I was sitting at bus stop waiting for a bus to go back home. I just opened the video camera to fix my veil and I saw I this couple who were behind me hugging. And so, I started recording and said you see, it is my bad luck to see this,” she remembers.
Roko posted the video on Vine, then on her own Instagram account. A famous Kuwaiti designer reposted it, urging his 60,000 followers to follow her – and within a week, she had 100,000 followers.
“That’s when it turned. That’s when the journey started.”
That was in 2014. Four years later, she was making more money from a single Instagram post than her entire month’s salary working in a hospital, so she quit her job to work full time in social media.
“I remember the first time I got paid for social media. It was in 2016, I was sent a DM on Instagram by a local brand asking me to do an ad for them. I was, wow, oh my goodness, you can get paid for posting a picture. It was an ad for a face massage tool. They sent me a DM, and they offered me AED500. I felt like I was the richest girl in the world,” she says, adding: “I wasn’t sure it was real, until I got the product sent to me – and they put the cash inside. “
Three years later, in 2019, she was offered AED20,000 for a single post, and soon after, was averaging AED75,000 a month of earnings. “But oh yeah, I was spending it. I mean I am more responsible now but if I earned 75k I spent 75k. I would get paid and I would tell my family we got money! We would shop like crazy, even buy things that we did not like,” Roko explains.
The key to her success, she believes, is not actually being aware how much she is being paid by brands. Her business manager does the deals and sends her a “salary” at the end of each month.
“I have no idea and I do not want to know. I feel that if I knew what I was being paid for each individual post maybe I will not give it the same energy and effort it deserves. I want to do the best for every brand, regardless of what I am paid,” she says.
Amy Roko’s rise to financial success
The money is flowing in quicker than ever, with Benefit Cosmetics, Destination KSA and Levi’s all lining up to line her pockets. But Roko’s days of easy come easy go are long gone. Whilst the character in front of camera may have stayed the same, the real-life version has matured fast. She has made several strategic investments, bought homes for her and her family, owns three high value NFTs, drives a Mercedes, likes to dine in Nobu – and is a regular reader of the Financial Times.
She has no qualms getting into a debate on the strength of the US dollar, or the intrinsic values of Ethereum, Polka dot, Chainlink and Bitcoin – given she liquidated her crypto portfolio just before the market dipped, and walked away with a 400 percent ROI, she is well placed to do so.
Part of her motivation for making sound investments is the awareness that her carer could end in an instant. “I feel I could be misunderstood and cancelled, especially because I do comedy. You can be cancelled in a second in this business. But if that happens, I am not worried, that’s why I have become more responsible now, especially with money,” she says.
The fact that Roko has never revealed her name or face in public has now become an equally key part of her persona and subsequent success. She says only three people know her real name, and just a handful have ever seen her face. Wearing a veil is something she started when she was just 11 years old “so I could feel like an adult”. The name “Roko” is actually taken from a stationary brand (“makes no sense I know”), and “Amy” was her nickname at the international school she attended.
And none of this is about to change, not even if she was offered several million dollars.
Really? Surely everyone has a price, even Amy Roko. “No, that is not true. What is life for, bro? God blessed me so I could bless my family. I just bought a new car for my dad. But you know one of the best ever moments in my life, the moment when I realised I had made it? It was the first time I went shopping with my family and I did not have to look at the bill. That felt special.”
You get the feeling that for Amy Roko – or whatever her real name is – there are many more special moments to come.
Photography by Fanny Turcotte
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