Year 4, International Relations Major and Economics Minor
Why am I leading this Student Directed Seminar?
My future plans include working in development and I really wanted to unpack what it includes and also understand how I wanted to approach it. Being from the Global South (India) and through travel, the complexities and contrasts were all too confusing. In a geography class (GEOG 325) studying urbanization in the Global South, I realized that it would be a fascinating way to approach the concept. I also love designing and implementing academic programs and come with a considerable amount of experience in facilitation. All this fit into this amazing opportunity to bring together similarly curious people with different perspectives to understand development from another stand point.
What are my plans?
I am the person with 10 plans who changes her mind as soon as new relevant information surfaces. For now, I know that professionally my work has to incorporate these aspects:
- solving problems that I am committed to and measuring impact (supply chain of resources, energy, education, agriculture, women’s entrepreneurship and economic independence, post conflict reconstruction, amongst a few)
- creativity (I live and breathe art and design but I want to be able integrate design into whatever I do which is why within development, designing impact assessment tools would be my jam)
- collaboration and travel (I have not met a single person in IR who does not like travelling. I want to be working around the world so that I can aid in the cross-cultural and cross-regional learning of the way of doing things and adapting to problems)
For now, in the foreseeable future I want to become fluent in Arabic, convert a family business into a sustainable social enterprise, and develop a Graphic Novel on the women in my family and the complexity of gender roles of women in India.