MINERVA VOICES

Alumna Highlight—Ezza Naveed

Meet Class of 2021 alumna, Ezza, from Pakistan.

August 20, 2025

What has your journey been like since graduating from Minerva?

A lot of twists and turns, and extremely non-linear. As a fresh Minerva graduate with a double major in Social Sciences and Arts in Humanities, I worked as a community manager for a fintech company in the Bay Area. About a year post-graduation, I ended up going back to Pakistan, my homeland, where I found my purpose in education. At home, I co-built the Young Leader’s Program at Urraan, one of the country's few nonprofits focusing on youth upskilling for low-income youth, helping students aged 18 to 28 land their first job in tech. I also revived Minerva’s outreach efforts in Pakistan, which were quite affected in the post-pandemic world. Not only did the students I mentored find their way to Minerva, but they remain my mentees as they progress through their journey and global rotation.

After spending a year in Pakistan building my nonprofit, being in the classroom training my students to develop their soft skills, I wanted to further my own skills and went to Harvard to pursue a Master's in Education with a special concentration in learning experience design. (Big shoutout to Lucy Jia Chen from M19 who mentored me and gave me feedback on my statement of purpose!) After graduation, I was the first person in the world to be awarded the Segall Innovation Fellowship by American Student Assistance, an award granted to graduates innovating in education. I built the “Imagination Lab” – a social entrepreneurship program specifically designed for immigrant high school children in the United States. I worked at a public school in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and collaborated closely with my students over their spring term. Our journey culminated in them creating projects to address their community’s problems and a beautiful demonstration day at Harvard University. It was also deeply empowering to be funded and receive mentorship by ASA for the Imagination Lab.

Currently, I live in the city of San Francisco. Fun fact: I just moved here two days ago! As I said, I am still wrapping up my Segall Innovation Fellowship at the moment, developing a series of curriculum materials that are going to be nationally distributed in the United States. 

My new role in San Francisco is equally exciting! I work for a nonprofit called #HalfTheStory. We believe in defining the next generation’s relationship with technology by listening to teens and their families, and ensuring that their relationship with tech is on a healthy trajectory. As a learning experience designer, I will be designing curriculum and programs to reach schools in the United States and abroad. 

I continue to cherish building relationships and mentorships, and coach several students on the side!

What are some learnings from your Minerva experience that you find yourself applying to your life or studies now? 

When I reflect on my Minerva journey, I realize that many experiences have shaped who I am today and continue to come back even now. The biggest thing Minerva taught me was resourcefulness. How? Minerva throws some late teens into Seoul and expects them to just build their lives there. And they do. We Minervans sometimes forget that this is a very unusual skill. When I arrived at Harvard, I found that I was better able to take advantage of the opportunities the university offered because Minerva taught us how to utilize the resources around us. 

Fellow alumni will hate me for this – just kidding! But I also still use some Habits of Mind and Foundational Concepts (HCs) learned in my Multimodal Communication class in my work, such as #organization, #thesis, and #audience. At Harvard, I worked as a teaching assistant during my last semester with Michael Horn, where my professor and I redesigned the course. I was able to contribute to the redesign of the course by reflecting on how we engage students at Minerva and incorporating what we learned from HCs to guide how the students show up in the classroom.

I have so many wild stories, and somehow, they all trace back to Minerva. For context, the capstone I wrote at Minerva was about women's gendered immobility in Pakistan. A few years later, I took a class at Harvard Kennedy School on gender with Mara Bolis, where the topic was women's mobility and featured a case study from Pakistan. I was shocked because my undergrad thesis, under Professor Scott Wisor, was literally titled Women’s Gendered Immobility in Pakistan, and explored the same case study! After I went up to the facilitator and told her about my thesis, she asked me to speak about my experiences. I also shared with her the poem I had performed for Civitas, the professional development event, in which I conveyed my journey as a Pakistani woman. Mara kindly played the poem, which seemed to resonate with many students in the class. It was a very emotional moment for everyone, but there was one man in the room who stood up, applauded loudly, and was outstandingly appreciative. I later learned that the man was the prime minister of the Ivory Coast. He was so impressed that he invited me to his country for an internship to help develop gender policy and created a whole interactive program to make it happen. Unfortunately, I could not say yes because the internship required me to start the day after graduation,  and I really just wanted to rest after grad school. This story is just one example of how unexpectedly my Minerva experience has opened doors in ways I never anticipated.

The most important thing I got from Minerva is our community. The way our professors show up for us and how deeply our friendships run is something really special. My undergrad thesis advisor, Scott Wisor, was my main confidant when I was job hunting – and a trusted mentor, despite being four years post-graduation. For example, when I was working in Boston after graduation, I was sharing my house with my Minerva roommate from Korea. I am currently planning and will be officiating my best friend Anggun’s wedding, whom I met at Minerva. As I said earlier, I just moved to San Francisco. What was the first thing that I did here? I met two Minervans who took me to Costco to help me take all the groceries to my house. Tonight, my friends from M22 and M21 are coming in to help me unpack my bags. I have not lived in the city for three and a half years, and who shows up for me? My Minerva family. For me, nothing can ever replace the Minerva community. Minerva really taught me what it means to belong to and build a community, and build lifelong friendships. And I plan on nourishing those bonds forever.

What has been your favorite aspect of your major, and how did it shape your perspective on your future career?

For the concentration in Cognition, Brain, and Behavior, Minerva teaches you great breadth. I loved learning more in-depth about how learning, memory, and retention happen. I was also really passionate about habit building – I loved it so much that I applied much of it while developing the curriculum for my nonprofit in Pakistan to help youth form durable skills. I also think the experience of being a student at Minerva – especially our location-based assignments – heavily influenced my perspective as an educator. 

Within the Philosophy, Ethics, and the Law concentration, philosophy was easily my favorite subject. In every city we visited, I structured my Arts and Humanities location-based assignments around feminist topics. No matter where I went, I made sure to do something related to feminism, which is a big part of the work I do. I also really appreciated the practical side of this major – like exploring ethical dilemmas hands-on and learning about different ethical frameworks, which formed the basis of how I approach educational projects in my work life.

Can you talk me through your Capstone project? In what ways do you think your Capstone work informs what you are doing now?

As I said earlier, my Capstone project was built around women’s mobility in Pakistan. Specifically, I analyzed data comparing how many women versus men were leaving their homes at different times, looking at their modes of transportation, reasons for leaving, and the effects this had on Pakistan’s economy and education system.

This study significantly impacted my approach in my non-profit since I was made aware of the mobility issues that women face in my country. Now, I ensure that we always have female students in my classroom, even though my non-profit is physically in a very conservative part of Pakistan. I also now know that after sunset, it is dangerous for women to use public transit, and many traditional families will not permit their daughters to travel. During winter, my female students had to leave school by 4 pm because it was too risky for them to be out after dark. In many other nonprofits, classes end at 5:30 pm; many female students suffer because they end up missing them. They assume they will catch up. But they don't – and this creates a learning loss that cannot really be recovered.

In my case, I made sure my classes ended thirty minutes before the time the girls needed to leave. My students were physically in this classroom for a huge part of the day, where they learned coding and durable skills. However, I ensured that everything I was teaching could be continued at home, creating a balanced and sustainable learning structure. We also created stipends for the girls to help ensure they could get to school safely if they needed support. Additionally, I set up remote participation options so the girls could still join the class by calling in when they wanted to stay home.

On a personal note, I mentor many women in Pakistan through virtual calls. While many people are well-intentioned, they often do not fully understand how challenging the situation really is, so their advice can be impractical. But because I am not only a woman from Pakistan, but have also spent two years at Minerva intensely studying how gender dynamics play out in the workspace, I am able to offer holistic advice. For example, I understand that the real barrier is often that families decide when and why these women can leave the house, as studied by the Asian Development Bank in 2016. So, the question becomes: how do we get their families on board? I know families might be okay with their daughters using a car but not a motorbike, and these families often cannot afford a car. So, what is the workaround? This kind of insight is the depth I developed while writing my thesis and applied directly through my nonprofit work.

If you were inspired by Ezza's story and are seeking a college experience that will teach you valuable pragmatic skills that will enable you to change the world, apply to Minerva.

Quick Facts

Name
Ezza Naveed
Country
Pakistan
Class
2021
Major

Social Sciences & Arts and Humanities

Business

Computational Sciences

Computational Sciences

Social Sciences & Business

Computational Sciences

Social Sciences

Computational Sciences & Business

Business & Computational Sciences

Computational Sciences

Computational Sciences

Social Sciences & Business

Business

Natural Sciences

Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Social Sciences & Business

Business & Computational Sciences

Business and Social Sciences

Social Sciences and Business

Computational Sciences & Social Sciences

Computer Science & Arts and Humanities

Business and Computational Sciences

Business and Social Sciences

Natural Sciences

Arts and Humanities

Business, Social Sciences

Business & Arts and Humanities

Computational Sciences

Natural Sciences, Computer Science

Computational Sciences

Arts & Humanities

Computational Sciences, Social Sciences

Computational Sciences

Computational Sciences

Natural Sciences, Social Sciences

Social Sciences, Natural Sciences

Data Science, Statistics

Computational Sciences

Business

Computational Sciences, Data Science

Social Sciences

Natural Sciences

Business, Natural Sciences

Business, Social Sciences

Computational Sciences

Arts & Humanities, Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Computational Sciences, Natural Sciences

Natural Sciences

Computational Sciences, Social Sciences

Business, Social Sciences

Computational Sciences

Natural Sciences, Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Arts & Humanities, Social Sciences

Arts & Humanities, Social Science

Social Sciences, Business

Arts & Humanities

Computational Sciences, Social Science

Natural Sciences, Computer Science

Computational Science, Statistic Natural Sciences

Business & Social Sciences

Computational Science, Social Sciences

Social Sciences and Business

Business

Arts and Humanities

Computational Sciences

Social Sciences

Social Sciences and Computational Sciences

Social Sciences & Computational Sciences

Social Sciences & Arts and Humanities

Minor

Natural Sciences & Sustainability

Natural Sciences

Sustainability

Computational Sciences

Computational Sciences

Computational Science & Business

Economics

Social Sciences

Concentration

Cognition, Brain, and Behavior & Philosophy, Ethics, and the Law

Computational Theory and Analysis

Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence

Brand Management & Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence

Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence

Economics and Society & Strategic Finance

Enterprise Management

Economics and Society

Cells and Organisms & Brain, Cognition, and Behavior

Cognitive Science and Economics & Political Science

Applied Problem Solving & Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence

Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence & Cognition, Brain, and Behavior

Designing Societies & New Ventures

Strategic Finance & Data Science and Statistics

Brand Management and Designing Societies

Data Science & Economics

Machine Learning

Cells, Organisms, Data Science, Statistics

Arts & Literature and Historical Forces

Artificial Intelligence & Computer Science

Cells and Organisms, Mind and Emotion

Economics, Physics

Managing Operational Complexity and Strategic Finance

Global Development Studies and Brain, Cognition, and Behavior

Scalable Growth, Designing Societies

Business

Drug Discovery Research, Designing and Implementing Policies

Historical Forces, Cognition, Brain, and Behavior

Artificial Intelligence, Psychology

Designing Solutions, Data Science and Statistics

Data Science and Statistic, Theoretical Foundations of Natural Science

Strategic Finance, Politics, Government, and Society

Data Analysis, Cognition

Brand Management

Data Science and Statistics & Economics

Cognitive Science & Economics

Internship
Higia Technologies
Project Development and Marketing Analyst Intern at VIVITA, a Mistletoe company
Business Development Intern, DoSomething.org
Business Analyst, Clean Energy Associates (CEA)

Conversation

What has your journey been like since graduating from Minerva?

A lot of twists and turns, and extremely non-linear. As a fresh Minerva graduate with a double major in Social Sciences and Arts in Humanities, I worked as a community manager for a fintech company in the Bay Area. About a year post-graduation, I ended up going back to Pakistan, my homeland, where I found my purpose in education. At home, I co-built the Young Leader’s Program at Urraan, one of the country's few nonprofits focusing on youth upskilling for low-income youth, helping students aged 18 to 28 land their first job in tech. I also revived Minerva’s outreach efforts in Pakistan, which were quite affected in the post-pandemic world. Not only did the students I mentored find their way to Minerva, but they remain my mentees as they progress through their journey and global rotation.

After spending a year in Pakistan building my nonprofit, being in the classroom training my students to develop their soft skills, I wanted to further my own skills and went to Harvard to pursue a Master's in Education with a special concentration in learning experience design. (Big shoutout to Lucy Jia Chen from M19 who mentored me and gave me feedback on my statement of purpose!) After graduation, I was the first person in the world to be awarded the Segall Innovation Fellowship by American Student Assistance, an award granted to graduates innovating in education. I built the “Imagination Lab” – a social entrepreneurship program specifically designed for immigrant high school children in the United States. I worked at a public school in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and collaborated closely with my students over their spring term. Our journey culminated in them creating projects to address their community’s problems and a beautiful demonstration day at Harvard University. It was also deeply empowering to be funded and receive mentorship by ASA for the Imagination Lab.

Currently, I live in the city of San Francisco. Fun fact: I just moved here two days ago! As I said, I am still wrapping up my Segall Innovation Fellowship at the moment, developing a series of curriculum materials that are going to be nationally distributed in the United States. 

My new role in San Francisco is equally exciting! I work for a nonprofit called #HalfTheStory. We believe in defining the next generation’s relationship with technology by listening to teens and their families, and ensuring that their relationship with tech is on a healthy trajectory. As a learning experience designer, I will be designing curriculum and programs to reach schools in the United States and abroad. 

I continue to cherish building relationships and mentorships, and coach several students on the side!

What are some learnings from your Minerva experience that you find yourself applying to your life or studies now? 

When I reflect on my Minerva journey, I realize that many experiences have shaped who I am today and continue to come back even now. The biggest thing Minerva taught me was resourcefulness. How? Minerva throws some late teens into Seoul and expects them to just build their lives there. And they do. We Minervans sometimes forget that this is a very unusual skill. When I arrived at Harvard, I found that I was better able to take advantage of the opportunities the university offered because Minerva taught us how to utilize the resources around us. 

Fellow alumni will hate me for this – just kidding! But I also still use some Habits of Mind and Foundational Concepts (HCs) learned in my Multimodal Communication class in my work, such as #organization, #thesis, and #audience. At Harvard, I worked as a teaching assistant during my last semester with Michael Horn, where my professor and I redesigned the course. I was able to contribute to the redesign of the course by reflecting on how we engage students at Minerva and incorporating what we learned from HCs to guide how the students show up in the classroom.

I have so many wild stories, and somehow, they all trace back to Minerva. For context, the capstone I wrote at Minerva was about women's gendered immobility in Pakistan. A few years later, I took a class at Harvard Kennedy School on gender with Mara Bolis, where the topic was women's mobility and featured a case study from Pakistan. I was shocked because my undergrad thesis, under Professor Scott Wisor, was literally titled Women’s Gendered Immobility in Pakistan, and explored the same case study! After I went up to the facilitator and told her about my thesis, she asked me to speak about my experiences. I also shared with her the poem I had performed for Civitas, the professional development event, in which I conveyed my journey as a Pakistani woman. Mara kindly played the poem, which seemed to resonate with many students in the class. It was a very emotional moment for everyone, but there was one man in the room who stood up, applauded loudly, and was outstandingly appreciative. I later learned that the man was the prime minister of the Ivory Coast. He was so impressed that he invited me to his country for an internship to help develop gender policy and created a whole interactive program to make it happen. Unfortunately, I could not say yes because the internship required me to start the day after graduation,  and I really just wanted to rest after grad school. This story is just one example of how unexpectedly my Minerva experience has opened doors in ways I never anticipated.

The most important thing I got from Minerva is our community. The way our professors show up for us and how deeply our friendships run is something really special. My undergrad thesis advisor, Scott Wisor, was my main confidant when I was job hunting – and a trusted mentor, despite being four years post-graduation. For example, when I was working in Boston after graduation, I was sharing my house with my Minerva roommate from Korea. I am currently planning and will be officiating my best friend Anggun’s wedding, whom I met at Minerva. As I said earlier, I just moved to San Francisco. What was the first thing that I did here? I met two Minervans who took me to Costco to help me take all the groceries to my house. Tonight, my friends from M22 and M21 are coming in to help me unpack my bags. I have not lived in the city for three and a half years, and who shows up for me? My Minerva family. For me, nothing can ever replace the Minerva community. Minerva really taught me what it means to belong to and build a community, and build lifelong friendships. And I plan on nourishing those bonds forever.

What has been your favorite aspect of your major, and how did it shape your perspective on your future career?

For the concentration in Cognition, Brain, and Behavior, Minerva teaches you great breadth. I loved learning more in-depth about how learning, memory, and retention happen. I was also really passionate about habit building – I loved it so much that I applied much of it while developing the curriculum for my nonprofit in Pakistan to help youth form durable skills. I also think the experience of being a student at Minerva – especially our location-based assignments – heavily influenced my perspective as an educator. 

Within the Philosophy, Ethics, and the Law concentration, philosophy was easily my favorite subject. In every city we visited, I structured my Arts and Humanities location-based assignments around feminist topics. No matter where I went, I made sure to do something related to feminism, which is a big part of the work I do. I also really appreciated the practical side of this major – like exploring ethical dilemmas hands-on and learning about different ethical frameworks, which formed the basis of how I approach educational projects in my work life.

Can you talk me through your Capstone project? In what ways do you think your Capstone work informs what you are doing now?

As I said earlier, my Capstone project was built around women’s mobility in Pakistan. Specifically, I analyzed data comparing how many women versus men were leaving their homes at different times, looking at their modes of transportation, reasons for leaving, and the effects this had on Pakistan’s economy and education system.

This study significantly impacted my approach in my non-profit since I was made aware of the mobility issues that women face in my country. Now, I ensure that we always have female students in my classroom, even though my non-profit is physically in a very conservative part of Pakistan. I also now know that after sunset, it is dangerous for women to use public transit, and many traditional families will not permit their daughters to travel. During winter, my female students had to leave school by 4 pm because it was too risky for them to be out after dark. In many other nonprofits, classes end at 5:30 pm; many female students suffer because they end up missing them. They assume they will catch up. But they don't – and this creates a learning loss that cannot really be recovered.

In my case, I made sure my classes ended thirty minutes before the time the girls needed to leave. My students were physically in this classroom for a huge part of the day, where they learned coding and durable skills. However, I ensured that everything I was teaching could be continued at home, creating a balanced and sustainable learning structure. We also created stipends for the girls to help ensure they could get to school safely if they needed support. Additionally, I set up remote participation options so the girls could still join the class by calling in when they wanted to stay home.

On a personal note, I mentor many women in Pakistan through virtual calls. While many people are well-intentioned, they often do not fully understand how challenging the situation really is, so their advice can be impractical. But because I am not only a woman from Pakistan, but have also spent two years at Minerva intensely studying how gender dynamics play out in the workspace, I am able to offer holistic advice. For example, I understand that the real barrier is often that families decide when and why these women can leave the house, as studied by the Asian Development Bank in 2016. So, the question becomes: how do we get their families on board? I know families might be okay with their daughters using a car but not a motorbike, and these families often cannot afford a car. So, what is the workaround? This kind of insight is the depth I developed while writing my thesis and applied directly through my nonprofit work.

If you were inspired by Ezza's story and are seeking a college experience that will teach you valuable pragmatic skills that will enable you to change the world, apply to Minerva.