Fifty driven, accomplished students from eleven countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East formed the inaugural cohort of the Harvard South Asia Institute’s Crossroads Summer Program. They are all first-generation college students – the first in their families to participate in higher education, many from challenging financial circumstances – and came together in the heat of Dubai from August 11-14, 2017.
The successful cohort was an even balance of male and female students, from diverse backgrounds. There was, for example, a young woman from Quetta, a city in Pakistan with the country’s lowest female literacy rate. Another student had worked as a garbage collector to pay his school fees.
These young people face challenges that are far beyond the experience of most Harvard students; their success fulfilled one of the main goals of the program. And as the video below shows, they also managed to have a little fun along the way.
Leading scholars from Harvard led the key sessions:
- Tarun Khanna is the Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at the Harvard Business School and Director of the South Asia Institute at Harvard University.
- Karim R. Lakhani is Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, the Principal Investigator of the Crowd Innovation Lab and NASA Tournament Lab at the Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science and the faculty co-founder of the Harvard Business School Digital Initiative.
- Kristin E. Fabbe is an assistant professor in the Business, Government, and International Economy Unit.
This unique program was a collaboration between the Harvard South Asia Institute, Harvard Business School Club of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and the Dubai International Financial Centre, with the support of Air Arabia, the Carlton Hotel, Dubai Future Accelerators, and Emirates Grand Hotel. It offered a fully-funded career development opportunity and introduction to top-level American university culture for students who might otherwise have their ambitions curtailed by circumstances beyond their control; with their dedication and conduct, these students showed very clearly the value of such opportunities.