The Story Behind My Work

The experiences that shaped my purpose and my commitment to helping others align theirs.

When I was a little girl, I knew I wanted to be a teacher when I grew up and work with kids. At the age of eight, my parents sent me to spend a summer with family in Karachi and Nairobi. In both cities, I saw children my age begging on the streets for the equivalent of a nickel. To say that the trip was a pivotal moment is an understatement. While I returned to the U.S. to start a new school year, the images of those children stayed with me and remain vivid to this day.

Witnessing extreme poverty so young became the impetus for my lifelong commitment to ensuring that all children, regardless of where they are born, have access to education and opportunity.

My journey eventually led me to Tufts University, where I earned a B.A. in International Relations and a minor in Political Science. From the start, I sought experiences that enabled me to make an immediate impact. For my first internship, I worked in Karachi with the Aga Khan Education Services and Focus Humanitarian Assistance, supporting Afghan children during the 2001 refugee crisis, just months before 9/11. A year later, I conducted an independent research project in London on Muslim contributions to modern society, exploring ways to counter post-9/11 Islamophobia narratives. During my final summer, I worked in Kabul to help Afghans rebuild their country after the fall of the Taliban, interning at Afghanistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and helping launch the country’s first private, co-ed school. Those early experiences deepened my understanding of how education, policy, and opportunity intersect. They also solidified my commitment to working at a global scale to maximize impact.

After graduation, I joined the United Nations as an intern with the Iraq Team in the Department of Political Affairs during the aftermath of the 2003 bombing of the UN headquarters. The internship offered an early, firsthand look at the complexities of post-conflict recovery, the fragility of institutions, and the resilience required to rebuild in the face of loss. Those lessons have stayed with me throughout my career.

Soon after, I made an intentional pivot to the private sector and joined McMaster-Carr, a leading industrial supply company known for its pioneering two-day fulfillment model long before Amazon. There, I completed a management training program and led operations teams across warehouse, customer service, and quality assurance departments, overseeing up to 90 employees. That experience built the foundation for my leadership style, which is grounded in efficiency, empathy, and the ability to navigate complexity across diverse teams and contexts.

Eager to reconnect my management experience with my passion for global development, I pursued a master’s degree at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). During my time there, I interned with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), leading trainings for a new Knowledge Management initiative designed to strengthen collaboration and information sharing across the organization.

At SIPA, I also focused on corporate social responsibility (CSR), merging my for-profit experience with my social impact drive. I worked on projects with PepsiCo, Siemens, and the Brookings Institution to explore how global companies can embed purpose into their business models. These experiences reinforced my belief that lasting change requires not only vision and compassion but also strategy, structure, and systems that connect values to measurable outcomes.

Following graduate school, I joined Sesame Workshop, where I led the launch of Sim Sim Hamara, Pakistan’s version of Sesame Street, which reached more than 20 million children nationwide. Over six years with the organization, I helped design, manage, and scale early childhood and education programs around the world, from Pakistan to Southern Africa.

As Director of Partnerships and Planning at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, I managed cross-sector partnerships at the intersection of education, technology, and impact. I helped launch GamesandLearning.org, a pioneering initiative exploring how digital games can be used to support children’s learning by bringing together developers, investors, educators, and policymakers to advance innovation in the field.

Today, I am the Co-Founder of Games & Learning, helping families discover diverse educational tools that help kids learn and grow through a new digital learning marketplace — Locket. I also lead S² Strategy, a coaching and advisory practice dedicated to helping individuals in social impact align purpose with strategy and multiply their impact. I’ve had the honor to work as a career coach with my alma mater, SIPA, as well as the Obama Foundation as a coach for the Voyager Scholars.

These early chapters—spanning humanitarian work, post-conflict recovery, private-sector leadership, and global development—shaped both my worldview and my approach to leadership. My work remains grounded in purpose, informed by practice, and guided by the belief that meaningful change happens where ideas meet execution.