International Spotlight: Maisha Kabir, Student at School of Professional Studies

Which program/department are you in? 

School of Professional Studies.

What is your primary area of study or research?  

Nonprofit Management, with a focus on education.

Which country (or countries) do you come from? 

Bangladesh born, Canadian citizen, currently living in New York City.

How long have you been in the U.S.? 

I moved to New York City six years ago for my undergraduate studies at NYU.

Is there anything you’d like to share about your research or projects? 

While doing my undergrad, I began working with an educational nonprofit called The Diversity Org, which educates low-income and minority students on how to obtain corporate and high-income careers. After I graduated from NYU, I spent one year fully immersing myself into the work of this nonprofit and helped it develop exponentially. I learned about every single thing there is to know about running a successful organization. At the end of that year, I applied to the Nonprofit Management program at Columbia so I could obtain a theoretical understanding of the nonprofit sector along with the in-field experience I had already gathered. 

Alongside being a full-time student at Columbia, this past year, I was able to expand our organization nationally across 13 states. Together, we connected over 5000 underserved students to Fortune 500 companies. This Fall, we plan to expand globally.

Historically, low-income and minority students have lacked access to a myriad of opportunities. Today, I’m proud to say that as the Vice President of The Diversity Org, I’m connecting students from at-risk communities to multi-billion dollar companies and providing them with professional opportunities so they have an equal shot at success. I’m proud to have the privilege of creating transformational change in underserved communities through the work I do and I look forward to doing more every day.

You can connect with Maisha on LinkedIn.

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