Bridging the World of Profit and Purpose with MBA/MPP Joint-Degree

As a Polsky Center Fellow shadowing Samir Mayekar and Nicole Bell, I had a front-row seat to the best entrepreneurship ecosystems in the world, allowing me to learn from builders, operators, and investors. The Polsky Center does an incredible job at promoting entrepreneurship and innovation by offering the full spectrum support for founders in the form of tech transfer, educational programming, and connections to advisors, mentors, and investors. Its accelerators, like Duality and Alchemist Chicago, give startups access to structured mentorship and networks, while early-stage funds like Harper Court Ventures provide catalytic capital. On top of that, founders get world-class lab and office space at the UChicago Science Incubator in Hyde Park and at the Third Coast Foundry in San Francisco.

As an Obama Foundation Scholar, I was part of a cohort of 29 global changemakers, each working on a different social issue, from kids’ education and tenants’ rights to creating employment pathways and tackling misinformation. The multidisciplinary mix, drawn from schools across Booth, Harris, and Crown in addition to Columbia University, turned out to be the program's greatest strength as I got to engage with ideas and approaches from around the world.

Together, we moved through a steady rhythm of workshops focused on leadership, storytelling, systems thinking, fundraising, and cross-sector collaboration along with convenings, seminars, and networking events. On top of this, I got to meet with and learn first-hand from President Obama and the Obama Foundation and City of Chicago leadership. What stayed with me most were the relationships I built along the way with a group of people I now consider family, spread across the world and bound by the same belief that “we are the change we seek.”

As an International House Fellow, I got to see first-hand what it’s like to not only accept differences but celebrate them. I lived I-House's mission of fostering diversity of thought and experience among a melting pot of students from over 100 different countries. My experience continues to serve as a powerful reminder that we all have far more similarities than differences, and that through dialogue, debate, discussion, and collective action there's no problem we cannot solve.

Through my fellowship and the guidance of International House leadership, I was also awarded the Davis Projects for Peace grant, which felt like the perfect culmination of my time at UChicago, letting me take everything I'd learned here and put it to work in my home community.

At a time when higher education faces real headwinds and international students face growing uncertainty, I keep coming back to one thing: this university, this city, and this country took a chance on me. They gave me the freedom to learn, to build, to fail (time and again), and to grow, without ever asking me for anything.

And so, I can say with complete confidence that if you're an international student weighing whether a place like this has room for you, trust me, it does. No matter where you come from, you are welcome, you belong, and you can shape your future exactly the way you want to right here at The University of Chicago.