Shopping bag.

We’re 27 minutes into our interview when Elisa Sednaoui-Dellal’s eldest son, Jack Zeitoun, interrupts our conversation for the first time. He wants to know if he can play with a friend, and his mom, distracted, loses her train of thought. “I’m sorry, I’m terrible at multitasking,” she apologizes—a considerably modest declaration because, well, are you familiar with the wildly varied professional titles she juggles on a daily basis? She started out as a model, has starred in a slew of acclaimed films, and, (aged 24), co-directed a documentary with Martina Gili, titled Kullu Tamam (Everything is Good); and that’s all before she started her namesake foundation, aimed at providing hands-on learning experiences to children, in 2013. It is as if Sednaoui-Dellal knows nothing but how to multitask, actually.

She was always a natural at it. Born Elisa Sednaoui (the addition of Dellal came after her marriage to British entrepreneur and former art curator Alexander Dellal in 2014), her childhood was spent splitting time between Italy, Egypt, and France. Bullied at school, (“the kids in Italy had a hard time pronouncing my name”), she turned to modeling young as a means of independence, and landed a string of standout gigs right out the gate. Her highlights reel is lengthy and impressive, but among the most name-worthy drops she’s appeared in multiple Chanel ad campaigns. Initially, she used her fashion career to satiate wanderlust [“I moved to New York for five years and then London for another five, but every day I was waking up in a new place”], but when her appetite for travel waned, she stuck with it for the paycheck. “You can’t model on the side,” she continues, speaking in an accent that’s both clear, but hard to place. “To make money you have to work really hard—people always underestimate how easy it is. For me, modeling and acting were never the end goal; I was always looking for a job or a purpose that would really motivate me to change the world for the positive.”

Sednaoui-Dellal’s career has been laser-focused on doing just the thing with her own organization in recent years. Specifically, she’s been drumming up support for Elisa Sednaoui Foundation’s (ESF) multidisciplinary and community-based young educators program, Funtasia, while simultaneously growing into the role of being a mom, a wife, and moving countries. “When I first had the idea to start the foundation, I was seven months pregnant with my first son and living in London. Now I have two boys, and we recently relocated to Los Angeles.”

Funtasia is her passion project and, to date, it’s provided close to 6,000 children in Italian and Egyptian classrooms, youth centers, and after-school clubs with vital skill sets. Via practical learning initiatives centered around everything from health to theatre, gardening, cultural integration, conflict and emotional management—plus more—the program hopes to inspire a new generation of analytic and innovative thinkers, regardless of a child’s socio-economic background, gender, or race.