Six from Ashesi participate in Harvard Crossroads Emerging Leaders program

October 15, 2018
Launched in 2017, the Harvard University Crossroads Emerging Leaders program supports first-generation college students across the world with career and leadership opportunities.

Held at Harvard University’s Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute in Dubai, a total of 71 finalists including six Ashesi students, Charles Dzokoto ’19, Maureen Basemera ’19, Afua Boateng ’20, Saddat Issah ’20, Nadine Tim ’21 and Hannah Dorkenu ’21, were selected out of over 1,700 applicants from across the Middle East, South Asia and Africa. During the 5-day program led by Harvard faculty, the students were exposed to a multidisciplinary curriculum across STEM fields, the Arts, Business, and Leadership.

Through a combination of case studies, field trips and interactions with company executives, faculty challenged participating students to explore ways to solve contemporary issues and discover untapped opportunity. “It was really different applying concepts like moonshot thinking and futurism into our search for solutions,” Hannah shared. “Imagine having a wifi sanitizer that when you switch on, can kill all the bacteria in the vicinity. That was the solution my team, and I created for the health sector, and it was really interesting.”

“I found the case studies to be really inspiring because some of the solutions that people were able to come up with to solve political and economic problems, were unimaginable,” Sadat chipped in.”
Additionally, being in class with students from 24 different countries across three different continents was a vastly different experience than what most students are used to. For Afua, the breadth of insight she gained from the sessions and her colleagues was like none other she had experienced.

“I realized that the way I interpreted other countries’ lifestyles and political issues were very different from their reality,” said Efua. “It was beautiful listening to the perspectives of my colleagues from Armenia, Palestine, Pakistan, Iraq and more, and seeing how much more I had to learn about the world.”