"We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty."
-- Maya Angelou
The Great Migration
"Where are you from?"
The question seems simple, but my answer feels far too complicated to explain in one breath. Nonetheless, I attempt to do so anyway.
"Well, I was born in Pakistan and moved to the US when I was about two-and-a-half," I begin to explain. Here's the point where I have to draw in a bigger breath in order to finish the mouthful of a statement that is the next part of the explanation.
"I moved to Rhode Island, then to Massachusetts, then back to Rhode Island, then to Iowa, then to Tennessee, then to Santa Cruz, California, and now I live in Palo Alto, California."
In total (including moving houses), I've moved 11 times in my life. I've been on over a 100 flights, been to over 30 different US states, and have visited 18 different countries. As it would be, I am always on the fly (no pun intended). Always involved in a number of different activities. Always engaging myself in a multitude of unique learning experiences. Always seeking out new ways to grow and develop as both a human being and as someone who aspires to make the world a more beautiful place.
What lead me to this point in my journey was a great migration: in both the literal and metaphorical senses. In the literal sense, it was this constant migration from place to place that allowed me to become familiar and comfortable with a diversity of people, cultures, opinions, and livelihoods. In the metaphorical sense, it was a migration of self-discovery that established and reaffirmed my life goal of wanting to creative a positive change in the lives of others.
"Where are you from?"
The question seems simple, but my answer feels far too complicated to explain in one breath. Nonetheless, I attempt to do so anyway.
"Well, I was born in Pakistan and moved to the US when I was about two-and-a-half," I begin to explain. Here's the point where I have to draw in a bigger breath in order to finish the mouthful of a statement that is the next part of the explanation.
"I moved to Rhode Island, then to Massachusetts, then back to Rhode Island, then to Iowa, then to Tennessee, then to Santa Cruz, California, and now I live in Palo Alto, California."
In total (including moving houses), I've moved 11 times in my life. I've been on over a 100 flights, been to over 30 different US states, and have visited 18 different countries. As it would be, I am always on the fly (no pun intended). Always involved in a number of different activities. Always engaging myself in a multitude of unique learning experiences. Always seeking out new ways to grow and develop as both a human being and as someone who aspires to make the world a more beautiful place.
What lead me to this point in my journey was a great migration: in both the literal and metaphorical senses. In the literal sense, it was this constant migration from place to place that allowed me to become familiar and comfortable with a diversity of people, cultures, opinions, and livelihoods. In the metaphorical sense, it was a migration of self-discovery that established and reaffirmed my life goal of wanting to creative a positive change in the lives of others.
The Egg
I was born at the time of the dawn prayer (Fajr) on February 27th, 1997 in Islamabad, Pakistan to a Pakistani-Kashmiri mother born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and an Indian father born in New Delhi. I was born in a family of global citizens. Both my mother and father are fluent in five languages and are extensively well-traveled. Thus, it was always important for me to do the same. I adopted a love of learning languages from my parents and currently speak five languages, as well, to varying degrees of fluency. I hope to speak ten by the end of college.
We moved to the United States in 1999. This was two years before 9/11, an event that would change our lives as Muslim immigrants to America and the lives of many others both across the US and globally. Growing up as an intercultural young Muslim in post-9/11 America was far from easy. I faced many challenges and traumas along the way. At the age of 21, I can say that I've already experienced what it's like to live in near-poverty, face racism, experience violence, and undergo many other struggles. Having faced these struggles in my youth and having worked to overcome an immense amount of suffering has allowed me to better empathize with people who go through suffering. It is what has lead me to want to spend my life making a positive impact in the lives of others.
I was born at the time of the dawn prayer (Fajr) on February 27th, 1997 in Islamabad, Pakistan to a Pakistani-Kashmiri mother born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and an Indian father born in New Delhi. I was born in a family of global citizens. Both my mother and father are fluent in five languages and are extensively well-traveled. Thus, it was always important for me to do the same. I adopted a love of learning languages from my parents and currently speak five languages, as well, to varying degrees of fluency. I hope to speak ten by the end of college.
We moved to the United States in 1999. This was two years before 9/11, an event that would change our lives as Muslim immigrants to America and the lives of many others both across the US and globally. Growing up as an intercultural young Muslim in post-9/11 America was far from easy. I faced many challenges and traumas along the way. At the age of 21, I can say that I've already experienced what it's like to live in near-poverty, face racism, experience violence, and undergo many other struggles. Having faced these struggles in my youth and having worked to overcome an immense amount of suffering has allowed me to better empathize with people who go through suffering. It is what has lead me to want to spend my life making a positive impact in the lives of others.
The Caterpillar
Family has always meant the world to me. This was part of the reason I chose to attend Santa Clara University: because it was close to home. I could not be more happy about my decision to do so and to stay near my family.
The most formative influence on my life most definitely has to be my mother. She ingrained, in me, an early love of learning, creative and critical thinking, and a strong passion for life. My mother taught me how to read when I was 3-years-old and encouraged me to write my first book when I was 4. She never shied away from talking to me about global problems and real world issues, even as a child. For that, I am eternally grateful. She has always been a rock in my life and has always encouraged me to help others and to use any abilities that God has given me to make a difference in the world.
My father's drive to help people manifested in his career as a cardiologist. He has constantly made an effort to work with his patients on preventative care measures rather than diving into performing/recommending procedures for them. He has influenced me to develop a strong interest in medicine myself. I remember long nights, during his residency years and during my toddler years, when he was on call and would come home late into the night. I now get to experience and empathize with his long shifts on call as an on-campus EMT, myself.
As my childhood progressed, my parents figured that it would be a good idea for them to add two more bundles of joy into my life: my little sister and my little brother. Though we didn't always like each other when we were kids, my little sister and I have grown extremely close as we've grown older. She's currently in her third year of high school while I'm concurrently in my third year of college. We're constantly confiding in each other and spending time with one another. My little brother has always been the baby of the family and always been the center of my heart. He's one of the sweetest, kindest human beings I know and he brings me infinite joy.
I am also very close with my extended family. I visit Pakistan every year and get to see my grandfather who lives in Islamabad along with various aunts and uncles as well when they visit from Canada/England. My extended family is extremely loving, loves to talk about politics, and loves to laugh and eat food together.
Being so close to my family makes me realize the importance of what family means for individuals. To have a support network of people to care for you and provide for you is absolutely necessary to facilitate both a healthy childhood and a healthy adulthood. That's why it is important for me to do work that helps keep family units together and helps support stable families.
Family has always meant the world to me. This was part of the reason I chose to attend Santa Clara University: because it was close to home. I could not be more happy about my decision to do so and to stay near my family.
The most formative influence on my life most definitely has to be my mother. She ingrained, in me, an early love of learning, creative and critical thinking, and a strong passion for life. My mother taught me how to read when I was 3-years-old and encouraged me to write my first book when I was 4. She never shied away from talking to me about global problems and real world issues, even as a child. For that, I am eternally grateful. She has always been a rock in my life and has always encouraged me to help others and to use any abilities that God has given me to make a difference in the world.
My father's drive to help people manifested in his career as a cardiologist. He has constantly made an effort to work with his patients on preventative care measures rather than diving into performing/recommending procedures for them. He has influenced me to develop a strong interest in medicine myself. I remember long nights, during his residency years and during my toddler years, when he was on call and would come home late into the night. I now get to experience and empathize with his long shifts on call as an on-campus EMT, myself.
As my childhood progressed, my parents figured that it would be a good idea for them to add two more bundles of joy into my life: my little sister and my little brother. Though we didn't always like each other when we were kids, my little sister and I have grown extremely close as we've grown older. She's currently in her third year of high school while I'm concurrently in my third year of college. We're constantly confiding in each other and spending time with one another. My little brother has always been the baby of the family and always been the center of my heart. He's one of the sweetest, kindest human beings I know and he brings me infinite joy.
I am also very close with my extended family. I visit Pakistan every year and get to see my grandfather who lives in Islamabad along with various aunts and uncles as well when they visit from Canada/England. My extended family is extremely loving, loves to talk about politics, and loves to laugh and eat food together.
Being so close to my family makes me realize the importance of what family means for individuals. To have a support network of people to care for you and provide for you is absolutely necessary to facilitate both a healthy childhood and a healthy adulthood. That's why it is important for me to do work that helps keep family units together and helps support stable families.
The Cocoon
A lot of my growth as an individual came from my time both in school and in college along with the experiences I received as a result. I've attended almost every kind of school there is: public, single-gender private, co-ed private, charter, homeschool, and religious. I went to four different high schools due to all of the moving. High school was a challenging time for me for a number of reasons including having to readjust environments so many times. Doing so, however, allowed me to become a very adaptable person. It also allowed me to develop a better understanding of so many different communities. I've also always been close to my teachers throughout my time as a student. Teachers have always been my life's greatest mentors and I can attribute so much of my growth to the times in which I spoke to teachers and sought out their life advice.
Though I tried to become heavily involved in every high school community I was in, it proved to be challenging due to all the moving. That's why, in college, I made it my goal to become heavily involved in my community. I've participated in many activities in my time in college including being a volunteer counselor at Camp Kesem, a camp for kids whose parents have cancer and being the Outreach Coordinator for SCU's Muslim Students Association. At SCU, I also founded The Clara Current: SCU's first ever current events forum and publication. I was The Clara Current’s Editor-in-Chief during my freshman and sophomore years and am now its Senior Advisor. I currently also serve as a volunteer Emergency Medical Technician for SCU EMS. I am the Co-President of the SCU Model UN team, one of the co-captains of the SCU Debate team, and a Peer Educator for Professor Minowitz's Poli-30 class. Off campus, I work as a leukemia research assistant at UCSF where I study the glucocorticoid regulatory elements normally responsible for regulating apoptotic genes so as to identify what is different at those response elements in drug resistant leukemia. Another project that I am currently pursuing is a student-run research initiative I founded called The Palo Alto Project. The Palo Alto Project focuses on compiling existing national research and doing research in Palo Alto on early-intervention school mental health counseling programs and minority mental health programs with the intent of pushing the PAUSD system to adopt such programs for Palo Alto schools.
Being so involved in the campus community has allowed me to work towards discovering the best way for me to get involved in the world once I leave college. GSBF is another one of the stepping stones that will allow me to further explore this path.
A lot of my growth as an individual came from my time both in school and in college along with the experiences I received as a result. I've attended almost every kind of school there is: public, single-gender private, co-ed private, charter, homeschool, and religious. I went to four different high schools due to all of the moving. High school was a challenging time for me for a number of reasons including having to readjust environments so many times. Doing so, however, allowed me to become a very adaptable person. It also allowed me to develop a better understanding of so many different communities. I've also always been close to my teachers throughout my time as a student. Teachers have always been my life's greatest mentors and I can attribute so much of my growth to the times in which I spoke to teachers and sought out their life advice.
Though I tried to become heavily involved in every high school community I was in, it proved to be challenging due to all the moving. That's why, in college, I made it my goal to become heavily involved in my community. I've participated in many activities in my time in college including being a volunteer counselor at Camp Kesem, a camp for kids whose parents have cancer and being the Outreach Coordinator for SCU's Muslim Students Association. At SCU, I also founded The Clara Current: SCU's first ever current events forum and publication. I was The Clara Current’s Editor-in-Chief during my freshman and sophomore years and am now its Senior Advisor. I currently also serve as a volunteer Emergency Medical Technician for SCU EMS. I am the Co-President of the SCU Model UN team, one of the co-captains of the SCU Debate team, and a Peer Educator for Professor Minowitz's Poli-30 class. Off campus, I work as a leukemia research assistant at UCSF where I study the glucocorticoid regulatory elements normally responsible for regulating apoptotic genes so as to identify what is different at those response elements in drug resistant leukemia. Another project that I am currently pursuing is a student-run research initiative I founded called The Palo Alto Project. The Palo Alto Project focuses on compiling existing national research and doing research in Palo Alto on early-intervention school mental health counseling programs and minority mental health programs with the intent of pushing the PAUSD system to adopt such programs for Palo Alto schools.
Being so involved in the campus community has allowed me to work towards discovering the best way for me to get involved in the world once I leave college. GSBF is another one of the stepping stones that will allow me to further explore this path.
Becoming a Butterfly
This path of being on a journey to make the world a better place is not an easy one. It's littered with challenges, dark and winding forks in the road, and many distractions. Most importantly, however, is that the path has these beautiful places on it that come every so often. These places are little benches where one can just sit, think, and reanalyze how to go about journeying through the rest of the path. Right now, in my life, I find myself sitting at one of these benches. As I analyze and reanalyze what I want my approach to social justice and global service to be, there is one thing that I am sure of. I am absolutely certain of the importance of social entrepreneurship and of the work that the Miller Center does. And I am so thankful for the opportunity to be part of this work. What I love about the GSBF program and the reason I applied is because of it's unique and respectful approach to service work.
I was born in what many consider to be a "third-world" country. I grew up living in places where students in classes of mine would make their Facebook profile picture one of them holding some poor child of color from a poverty-ridden country after a mission trip. As a political science major and as someone who has been involved in political discourses for along time, I constantly hear others say horribly disrespectful things about the people who live in "those" parts of the world. All of that makes me sick to the core. Growing up, I did not want to be part of a movement to "help others" if that movement saw the "other" as an inferior counterpart in any way whatsoever. That's what made me fall in love with GSBF and its approach to Social Entrepreneurship. In treating others as our equals, recognizing many of the issues that currently exist in global service work, and in working to create sustainable models for communities, the Global Social Benefit program has worked hard to account for many of the issues that are often easy to overlook. I think that's amazing and that is why I am so thankful to be able to do such incredible work for the organization.
My goal is to use my experience at All Across Africa in Rwanda and Uganda to continue create better sustainable social enterprise models, that are geared particularly towards women, in other parts of the world. I look forward to my work in the summer and look forward to both helping others and learning from them, as well.
This path of being on a journey to make the world a better place is not an easy one. It's littered with challenges, dark and winding forks in the road, and many distractions. Most importantly, however, is that the path has these beautiful places on it that come every so often. These places are little benches where one can just sit, think, and reanalyze how to go about journeying through the rest of the path. Right now, in my life, I find myself sitting at one of these benches. As I analyze and reanalyze what I want my approach to social justice and global service to be, there is one thing that I am sure of. I am absolutely certain of the importance of social entrepreneurship and of the work that the Miller Center does. And I am so thankful for the opportunity to be part of this work. What I love about the GSBF program and the reason I applied is because of it's unique and respectful approach to service work.
I was born in what many consider to be a "third-world" country. I grew up living in places where students in classes of mine would make their Facebook profile picture one of them holding some poor child of color from a poverty-ridden country after a mission trip. As a political science major and as someone who has been involved in political discourses for along time, I constantly hear others say horribly disrespectful things about the people who live in "those" parts of the world. All of that makes me sick to the core. Growing up, I did not want to be part of a movement to "help others" if that movement saw the "other" as an inferior counterpart in any way whatsoever. That's what made me fall in love with GSBF and its approach to Social Entrepreneurship. In treating others as our equals, recognizing many of the issues that currently exist in global service work, and in working to create sustainable models for communities, the Global Social Benefit program has worked hard to account for many of the issues that are often easy to overlook. I think that's amazing and that is why I am so thankful to be able to do such incredible work for the organization.
My goal is to use my experience at All Across Africa in Rwanda and Uganda to continue create better sustainable social enterprise models, that are geared particularly towards women, in other parts of the world. I look forward to my work in the summer and look forward to both helping others and learning from them, as well.