AUGUST 2023

ECONOMICS & ENTERPRISE
Christina Roki:
Motor City’s Media Maven
BY CAL ABBO
When Christina Roki’s family
car broke down, they
couldn’t afford a mechanic
to look it over. Her family lived paycheck
to paycheck, and with three
children, there was little money to
spare. Most would turn to a family
member for help or take out a shortterm
loan. But Christina had a rare and
enterprising thought: What if she tried
to fix it herself?
The rest, as they say, is history.
Since the incidents with her parents’
car, Christina leveraged her
knowledge and social savvy to find
extraordinary success on social media
in the niche market of automotive
engineering and aesthetics, amassing
more than three million followers on
TikTok and 265,000 on Instagram. Her
videos, which she posts several times
per week, attract viewers in the hundreds
of thousands. These numbers
put her in the top echelon of automotive
social media creators, and she
is certainly one of the most popular
Chaldean influencers in the world.
There is, however, a hitch in the
narrative. Christina failed, many times,
at fixing the vehicle. The key differences
between her story and others are
persistence, diligence, and the relentless
desire to help her own family.
A Mechanic’s Metamorphosis
The journey was neither straightforward
nor simple. As a young, firstgeneration
American woman, Christina
has a unique position in the automotive
influencer category. She’s learned
a lot about the cutthroat and saturated
industry, and with few female influencers
to draw inspiration from, she has
forged her own path out of necessity.
Christina’s mother was born in Zakho,
a mid-sized city located about as far
north as Iraq extends. Her family fled
just before the Iran-Iraq war began in
1980. According to Christina, her mother
and her family walked all the way to
the border to seek refuge in Turkey.
From there, her family applied for
refugee status. Unfortunately, different
people were accepted in different
parts of the world. This is common for
refugees and contributes to the reality
of the Chaldean diaspora. Some of
her family went to Europe, and some
to Canada. Christina’s mother eventually
married a Chaldean man in Detroit
and gave birth to three daughters, including
Christina, who was born on
Christmas Day in the year 2000.
When Christina was about 5 years
old, her mother and the three kids
moved back to Canada, where she
has several cousins. Once she was in
middle school, they moved back to the
Detroit area.
Growing up, Christina joked that
she was the boy in the family. While
she got along well with her sisters and
performed the same household chores
as they did, she grew to like things that
are often seen as traditionally masculine—cars,
engineering, and computer
science. When the famous car
breakdowns began to occur, Christina
educated herself on car mechanics
by searching the issues on YouTube.
In these moments, history was made,
and the echoes of her first clanking
can be heard by millions around the
world who watch her videos.
Christina faced harsh backlash
from her father for her attempts to fix
the family car. “You can’t do it,” her father
said, according to Christina. “Why
are you even opening the hood?”
“I won’t lie, I started crying,” Christina
said. “It’s just that doubt, constant
doubt from your own support system.
It filled me with anger, confusion,
and I questioned my own abilities.
You have to brush it off, even when it
comes from your own father, that you
can’t do it because you’re a girl.”
She also had to convince her mother
to let her go to Los Angeles as an
18-year-old. “It’s hard for them to understand
social media, TikTok, car engineering,
and the educational side of
it,” she said. “Being successful is a big
part, knowing that I was able to make
something out of it.”
Christina constantly refers to her
parents as “old school.” In the beginning,
her mother would see her working
on a project with a boy and immediately
offer her objections. Christina
countered that there were no girls to
work with, but part of her mission was
to change that. “I told them, this is me
trying to make that change.”
While Christina still takes it seriously,
she said it feels silly thinking
about it now. “Looking back, it definitely
drove me to be where I am right
now and fueled me up,” she added.
“It’s another variable that helps me
boost my drive, that keeps me going
and learning.” Having these doubts
come from her own family, she said,
helped her laugh off outlandish social
media comments which come from
people she doesn’t even know.
At Stevenson High School in
Sterling Heights, Christina met her
statistics and calculus teacher, Mr.
Carpenter. “He was one of my biggest
mentors. He told me about tons
of opportunities and scholarships,”
she said, emphasizing his exceptional
ability to instruct each individual student
rather than teaching an average
class. He also encouraged her to join
the robotics team to further explore
her passion for computer science.
Robotics introduced her to the
world of computer science and engineering
in an official and educational
setting. She fell in love with the field
and decided to make it into a career.
This experience also gave her the confidence
to work with groups of boys in a
traditionally male-dominated field, an
ROKI continued on page 36
34 CHALDEAN NEWS AUGUST 2023