On my Harvard experience: President Drew Faust made a speech at freshman convocation, and in that speech she said, "Don't compare, connect." I embraced it as a personal philosophy of life, in a way, shaping how I spent the next four years of my life in college, and the years that followed.
What I understood from that is there are treasures everywhere, lessons to be learned from everybody. If I put myself in a place where I'm comparing myself to others, then I'm letting these walls slowly build by themselves around me. Connecting with everyone has been, to some level, profoundly instrumental to my way of life in the 12 years since I heard that in Drew Faust's speech. I have kept a small notebook since the day I turned 23 where I write meaningful quotes and the thoughts that help me navigate the world. On the very first page I wrote just that: "Do not compare, connect".
On making a difference post-Harvard: Something I learned at Harvard is the value of being an agent of change. It's why I moved back home -- I have this education and opportunities that people here can barely dream of. The idea of the start-up I founded, Lumen, is to build an entity in the U.S. to facilitate raising funds in order to electrify schools, hospitals and villages and other projects entirely pro bono in Madagascar. That's going to be how I hope to instigate change and make a direct impact locally. Of course, there's all sorts of challenges here. Madagascar is the wild wild west. Honestly, nothing really makes sense here. These challenges can be unnerving, but I have this motivator behind me: this extraordinary luck that I don't deserve.
On Impact: This might be small, but I think there is still something to it. I've been able to build a small team at Lumen with the culture that I wanted to give it. In Madagascar there tends to be a very strong hierarchical social structure and a mindset that spills into that culture. People do not speak up. People do not share ideas. People are afraid of going above and beyond if it means crossing social divides. At Lumen, I've been very, very clear from the very beginning that I want bilateral feedback across the team - something that, shockingly, is almost unheard of here. I want the most inexperienced person in my team to be able to tell anyone and especially me, "Karim, I like this. I don't like that."
It's been great also to tell my team that even though we're a very small company, that we are working towards bigger things, and that everybody here right now is in a position to leave their fingerprints on this company forever, not just because they're the very first people here. I'm trying to make everyone understand that what they do is valuable regardless of what it is, which includes sharing this culture of communication and constructive feedback. I want to ensure that we know we are building something that's going to be bigger than us. It may seem obvious, but this really is something rare in Madagascar.
On Failure: spent four years working in New York after graduating from Harvard. Unfortunately, I was working in a company that had a very ambiguous, opaque structure, where even my manager wouldn’t really speak with me. She wasn’t invested in my growth or that of my colleagues. I left that company because I really felt like I was stagnating, and that took a truly emotional toll on me -- knowing that the person who was supposed to bat for me was ignoring me. My manager just was not the person I was hoping that she would be. She had issues with other people as well and she ended up leaving the company abruptly, but I felt the brunt of it all for longer than I should have, and I did not know who to speak to.
I'm trying to be the opposite of that with my team. I'm trying to be the manager that I wanted to have. I want to make sure that they know I'm invested in their growth, whether it is internal or external to the company. I speak with them, I actively engage with every one of them, and I hear them out. I make sure that they tell me the things that I do well, and even more so the things that I do not do well. Wanting to be my former manager’s opposite, her foil, is an important motivator for me, because I would not want anybody to be in the situation that I was in.
On Advice to Current or Prospective African Students: Don't be afraid of going home. That's because I was afraid of going home. I thought that going home was going to be taking a step back, or maybe a sign that I did not 'make it' wherever I was, if it was New York or elsewhere, leaving me no choice but to go back home. I'm realizing now that that was the most arrogant thing I could possibly assume Madagascar did not wait for me. Madagascar grew immensely in both good and bad ways while I was away. I was so wrong in thinking that I was going to go back to the same country I knew 12 years ago. Coming home to Madagascar earlier this year brought an exceptional learning curve that I’m grateful to take on in my own way.
