MIT Graduate Students of Excellence

Leadership, to me, starts with recognizing that the people around you aren’t any less than you and that a lot of people did not choose the struggles they were born into, and that privilege must start translating to direct accountability towards those who are harmed by it. Leadership in community means seeing that people already have their inner strengths, and that leading is about helping them realize that and encouraging them towards their full potential in this world.

I don’t believe in hierarchy in how we lead. Those who lead are also learners, subject to making mistakes and responsible for acknowledging them. I don’t lead alone. I lead as part of a whole. Others complement the weaknesses I have, and I know I can err. Whatever resources and knowledge I possess should be shared, not withheld selfishly. We construct and deconstruct together.

And at its core, it’s about building joy together despite everything. It’s how we create with power even when others deny you that.

I have come to see leadership as building bridges between where we are and where we hope to be. During my undergraduate years, I paid my way through school by tutoring nearly full time. Over time, I developed a style rooted in guided discovery. I learned that as mentors, we cannot force understanding; we can only create conditions in which others discover it for themselves. The most meaningful breakthroughs came not from explaining more, but from listening carefully and asking better questions.

I try to carry that principle into everyday life. For me, the impulse to move quickly toward change is strong, but stepping back to understand why systems are structured the way they are—and why people think the way they do—has often proven more effective. Whether discussing coursework, research, or life, I begin with questions. As a leader for the MIT Energy & Climate Club, I first sought to understand the existing landscape of people and projects across campus before proposing new initiatives. Recognizing how decentralized and occasionally duplicative MIT can be led to the creation of the MIT Climate Ecosystem Map, which connected groups, labs, and centers already doing meaningful work. At Westgate, Chelsea and I brainstormed events for partners and families by asking what the community wanted to see.

I have learned that leading with care often means understanding before acting. My hope is that mentorship at MIT increasingly resembles apprenticeship—learning by doing together—where technical excellence, judgment, and compassion grow side by side.

The first thing that caught my eye on the DUSP website was the Peer Application Support Service (PASS), a student-run program connecting prospective students with current ones for guidance through the graduate admissions process. No other graduate program I was considering offered anything similar. My mentor, who graduated last year, was my first introduction to DUSP. His generosity and encouragement made it easier to imagine myself at MIT, and once I arrived on campus, I knew I wanted to be part of continuing this work.

Graduate school is disorienting in ways that are easy to underestimate. Most of us have moved away from home and away from the communities that are familiar. Once here, we have to build new systems and support. Over the past two years, I’ve worked alongside my classmates and others through PASS and the Students of Color Committee (SCC). For me, these spaces became avenues for finding communities doing the work of supporting each other.

In this way, leadership has looked more like a shared responsibility rather than the work of one individual. I want to thank my classmates who have also done so much to care for the department and foster community on top of their own school work, research, and personal lives. It’s not easy to build a new community every year, in what can feel like real isolation from the rest of the world. I feel incredibly grateful to have met so many people who are genuinely committed to each other.  

I am a graduate researcher and educator at MIT focused on creating hands-on learning experiences that make manufacturing systems more accessible and engaging. I have played a foundational role in the founding and development of the MIT FrED Factory, an authentic learning factory environment on MIT campus for manufacturing education. FrED Factory is more than just a place, it is a community where students learn, lead, and support one another through peer mentorship. Beyond the lab, I have led the Association of Indonesian Students at MIT, building a community that fosters cultural connection, belonging, and support away from home.

FrED (Fiber Extrusion Device) represents more than a learning device, it reflects the collective effort and shared ownership of the FrED Factory community. It has been shaped by the many students I have mentored and collaborated with, whose ideas and contributions continue to drive its evolution. Through its use at MIT and partner institutions such as Tecnológico de Monterrey, this work has reached over 500 students, demonstrating how hands-on, community-driven learning can extend across diverse educational and cultural contexts. The FrED Factory is not just a place where manufacturing is taught, but it is a community where people collectively make it more approachable, tangible, and accessible. My journey at MIT has been defined by navigating unfamiliar environments, building opportunities where none existed, and learning to adapt through uncertainty. These experiences shape how I approach teaching and building: with intention, resilience, and a focus on people. To future generations: don’t wait for perfect conditions to start building something meaningful. Start with what you have and let curiosity and persistence guide you.

At MIT, I try to support the community in different ways. Besides my Graduate Advisor Role, I serve as co-president of the ASA-recognized student association Spain@MIT, and have served as a mentor in the Fusion Design and Engineering course. In all these roles, I aim to lead with empathy, humanity and commitment. As a young student, having a supportive environment can be transformative. A space where one feels seen, heard, and cared for as a person, and not only as a student, makes a profound difference. I focus on fostering open and inclusive environments, supporting mental wellbeing, and encouraging balance through activities to relieve stress and build community, such as sports and creative events. At the same time, I seek to support students academically through mentorship and practical guidance, including initiatives such as a graduate school application workshop.

I have personally experienced the impact and meaning of having a caring mentor. When I arrived at MIT, I started working under the supervision of the late Prof. Nuno Loureiro. He always showed compassion, sense of humor and support. Over time, he became my mentor and friend. He will always be an inspiring figure and a model for bringing together scientific excellence, thoughtful leadership, generosity and deep humanity. Another great example is my thesis advisor Peter Catto. Besides a brilliant scientist, he is an extraordinary human being, and a supportive and kind person. He is a joy to be advised by and has completely shaped my experience at MIT. Finally, I am grateful to so many professors along my life who have gone the extra mile and supported me beyond the classroom.

My leadership and community involvement have evolved over the course of graduate school. I began my PhD in 2020, when campus was largely shut down, so my early opportunities to build connection came primarily through formal roles. I served as a teaching assistant in a design course, contributed to a departmental DEI newsletter (Under the Microscope), held a position as secretary on our graduate student board, and contributed to efforts to improve access to information about transitional funding resources for students navigating challenging lab situations. These experiences taught me the importance of clear communication and proactive community support.

As I have become more senior, my leadership has shifted toward day-to-day mentorship within my immediate research environment. I am often the person lab members come to with questions about experiments, troubleshooting, and navigating graduate school more broadly. These interactions have shown me that leadership is not only about formal roles, but about being approachable, reliable, and willing to share knowledge. Leading with care matters because research can be uncertain and high-pressure; small moments of guidance or reassurance can meaningfully affect someone’s confidence and sense of belonging.

Mentorship has been particularly meaningful to me. I mentored an undergraduate researcher for two years and have also contributed to broader community building as a Graduate Community Fellow, organizing workshops for trainees preparing for faculty careers. These experiences reinforced my belief that effective mentorship combines clear expectations with encouragement and respect. I aspire to contribute to a culture where mentorship is intentional, accessible, and grounded in care.

I find delight in connecting with others. Leading across the institute, whether in Maseeh Hall, the Science Policy Initiative, or at the Media Lab, has allowed me to connect with those that I otherwise would not cross paths with. Some of my most meaningful leadership has been with people I had no obvious connection to, which has taught me to lead with curiosity first: learning what drives someone, then using whatever platform you have to help them thrive. Caring leadership matters because people do their best work when they feel seen, and I’ve found I learn just as much from them in the process.

Building community is one of the most important aspects of my life, and I feel lucky to both belong to and help shape several communities at MIT. As president of the Technology and Policy Student Society, I aspire to create a culture within TPP that is welcoming, collaborative, and grounded in mutual respect. I’m proud that TPSS plans activities that reflect a range of interests, from crafts to ping pong to winter hikes, so that everyone can find a place to connect. I also prioritize one-on-one relationships, because I have learned that strong communities are built through individual trust.

Leading with care means creating an environment where people feel safe to be fully themselves while also being challenged to grow. It requires empathy, accountability, and enthusiasm. I believe strong communities are built not through authority, but through trust and sustained relationship-building.

I learned as a drum major in CU Boulder’s Golden Buffalo Marching Band that leadership is as much about energy and presence as it is about direction. I am fortunate to have had mentors who were patient, reassuring, and honest; they modeled how to give feedback with kindness and how to steady a group through high-pressure moments. From them, I learned that the tone a leader sets ripples outward and shapes the collective experience.

At MIT, I aspire to cultivate meaningful relationships and communities that are as rich and unique as the people within them. I strive to contribute to a culture where connection is not an afterthought, but a central part of how we learn and lead together.

To me, leading with care means creating safe spaces where individuals can be passionate about what matters to them while continuously expanding their horizons. I believe we thrive most when we treat others with kindness and intentionality, and learning with purpose supports this.

During my time at MIT, I have been honored to serve in several circles that allowed me to foster this sense of belonging:

• Community Building: I co-founded and served as president of the MIT Graduate Muslim Students Association and served as a graduate representative in the MIT Muslim Students Association.
• Advocacy & Representation: I was nominated and elected as the master’s representative on the Chemical Engineering Graduate Student Advisory Board and served as a Graduate Community Fellow in the Office of Graduate Education.
• Inclusion & Excellence: I am humbled to be a recipient of the Course X Diversity in Chemical Engineering Award and to have contributed to departmental seminars.

I am blessed to have found multiple communities at MIT where I could share my excitement with others while working on my degree requirements.

During my time at MIT, I have been fortunate to hold leadership roles across several communities. I began my MIT leadership as Chair of the Ashdown House Executive Committee during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic (2020–2021). In this role, I worked with fellow student leaders and administrators to write and implement policies that balanced residents’ health and safety with opportunities for social connection.

I later continued my involvement in residential life through the Ashdown House Events Committee and as a Graduate Resident Advisor, organizing orientation activities, seasonal celebrations, and study breaks to help students feel welcomed and supported.

As the pandemic subsided, I became the Music Director of the Tech Catholic Community, helping to fill the chapel with music once again as Masses returned in person. I also served in leadership roles within my department (HST), MIT Biotech Group, and MIT Hacking Medicine, encouraging students’ professional development and facilitating connections across academia, industry, medicine, and business.

Engaging with the MIT community in these varied ways taught me that leading with care is critical to supporting the many dimensions of people’s lives. Even when a leader interacts with someone in only one context, it is important for them to remember that each community member may be experiencing multiple academic, professional, and personal challenges and triumphs that are not immediately visible. Devoting the time and energy to listen to and thoughtfully engage with others’ experiences helps leaders better support individuals in both their struggles and successes, ultimately strengthening the entire community.

I think of leadership less as direction and more as architecture: building the spaces and conditions where things can happen. That’s a harder task than it sounds. It requires knowing when to hold things together and when to get out of the way.

As co-president of the EECS Graduate Student Association over the last two years, I have organized events ranging from Visit Days and Orientation Days, to more casual Coffee Hours, Tea Times, and Flour Hours: events that are really just excuses to get people in the same room. Someone once told me “where there’s food, there’s community.” Two years of “data” suggest it’s working. But food is just the opening. What I’m after is the moment when two people who wouldn’t have otherwise crossed paths start talking, and something unexpected emerges. I try to cultivate that same energy in research spaces too: the hallway conversation that reshapes a project, the seminar question that opens a new direction.

One of the things I love most is mentoring undergraduates. I’ll give a topic, a thread to pull on, but always with room to move. The goal is never to hand someone a path. It’s to hand them a starting point and watch where they take it. The best moments are when a student surprises me, when they go somewhere I wouldn’t have thought to go.

For me, authentic connection is always bilateral. The exchanges that have shaped me most were the ones where both sides walked away changed.

What makes a good mentor/authentic connection: Authentic connection and good mentorship takes more than good intentions. You have to show up consistently, be honest about yourself as much as you ask others to be, and care about the whole person in front of you, not just the work they’re doing or the potential you see in them.

I’m the first MAS peer support advisor and also a member of MAS’s student committee (StudCom). The work we do here, whether in our research or in supporting our communities, reaches further than it may initially seem, which is exactly why leading with care matters. We’re lucky to be here and have been given so many incredible opportunities, and that makes it even more important to show up for the people around us, give back to the communities that invest in us, and leave every place better than we found them. That impact is just as real as anything we’ll publish.

I aim to be seen as a leader in all communities I’m a part of, especially when that means leading from below and by example. This philosophy extended to my role as Co-president of the Graduate Association of Aeronautics and Astronautics, my job as a Communications Lab Fellow, being a teammate on the MIT Triathlon Club, as a mentor to undergraduate students, and so many other spheres. Most importantly I try to lead by example by acting with kindness in every interaction I have. This has been the most reliable tactic to being treated with kindness in return and I can’t recommend it enough.

My leadership style is *flexibility*. There is no one size fits all for interactions and teams. To me, good leaders listen to their team members, specifically what they need, and work on helping provide that. To me, leadership extends to moments of solitude too. How am I staying emotionally regulated in order to show up as needed? How can I become the best version of myself in order to help others? Leading myself is all part of leading teams and communities.

To me a good mentor is one that looks at the interactions through the mentee’s perspective. It’s easy to forget what it was like as a student or as a first time mentee. By deliberately putting ourselves in our mentee’s shoes we can help facilitate welcoming spaces and authentic connections.

I’m a proud member of the Microbiology program. We are a small program with limited resources, and our students are spread across various departments at MIT so we don’t get to see each other very often. Over my years as a graduate student I sought out various ways to connect with other students within my program, from becoming involved in recruitment to organizing speaker series to becoming a union steward and working to develop better channels of communication.

When other students expressed a desire for more social activities with the program, I co-founded a group called ‘Mutualism,’ (Micros United Together Ubiquitously Aligned for Living Interactions and Sociality at MIT). What started as a fun challenge to come up with low-cost ways to bring our community together became a much larger production when we applied for funding and were able to organize and host MIT-sponsored events.

While I’m glad that others enjoy the events that I plan, my secret is that I organize these events because I love to hang out with my friends in the program, hear about their research, and watch us all grow together.

When I became the president of the Student Veterans Association in 2021, I knew that I had a large job ahead of me. Many veterans on campus were facing financial challenges as a result of not being able to use their GI Bill benefits. This was due to the fact that MIT had not recognized the needs of student veterans, and thus, never attempted to address them. I knew that if we were to be successful, we needed to involve the leaders of the school to hold cordial discussions on how to resolve these outstanding issues.

I spent many hours meeting with officials such as the President of MIT, the Chancellor, and the Vice Chancellor, along with leaders from the Division of Student Life, the Student Financial Services office, the Office of Graduate Education, and many others in an effort to bring the issues of student veterans to the fore and work with the administration to address these issues.

Soon thereafter, we started to see progress. We held the first Veterans Day Celebration on campus in decades. We got many courses certified by the Veterans Administration which allowed student veterans to take advantage of their GI Bill benefits.

Ultimately, under my leadership, MIT has become a welcoming place for student veterans, active duty members, and their families. With the establishment of the Office of Student Veteran Success, I know that MIT will continue to grow and support the student veteran community for many years to come.

Given that I am privileged to be a member of two incredible research institutions, I most frequently find myself in the workplace leading from within groups of people who are incredibly skilled and often are more experienced than I am. While certainly I am imperfect at it, I aspire to act with humility and lead horizontally, as a member of a strong group moving that group towards a goal or purpose, rather than laterally, by positioning myself as above or outside of a group, dragging them along for the ride. My personal philosophy in more traditional leadership roles is to be quick to give genuine praise to others, accept responsibility for mistakes, and take feedback seriously. In informal settings, such as in student communities, I feel that active participation is a key, oft overlooked, form of leadership. For me, consistently showing up for the community takes many forms, from attending official program events to checking in on fellow students going through challenging circumstances.

I was educated in a Catholic tradition of servant leadership – predominantly in the context of serving people in my community. While I am grateful for that influence, I feel that my time at MIT has broadened my scope to leading but also in the service of science and a broader good. My concept of leading with care has always meant treating the people around me with respect. Over the course of my time at MIT, I have been able to grow as a leader to include care for the research that I’m doing and also care for myself. Like all leaders, and indeed, all people, I have made plenty of mistakes along the way. However, leading with care has taught me that if I am guided by the above principles, there is always room for me to learn and grow from even the most challenging experiences.

I lead through my role at CAPD, where we design and host programming that helps students think more intentionally about their careers and their growth. Most recently, we brought bestselling authors and hosts of The Squiggly Career podcast, Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis, to speak with students about navigating nonlinear career paths and continuing to learn in every role. Their message resonated deeply with me.

In graduate school, I’ve noticed that many students don’t think about career development until it’s time to apply for jobs. By then, it can feel reactive and stressful. I care about helping people see that personal and professional development are intertwined, and that both are ongoing processes. Through programming, workshops, and conversations, I try to create opportunities for students to explore that for themselves.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. I’ve always believed the best way to lead is to create space where people can step into their own agency. The mentors who shaped me most weren’t the ones who gave me all the answers. They were the ones who opened doors. A boss who gave me the chance to present to a client. A PI who encouraged me to speak at a joint journal club. They saw something in me and created an opportunity for me to grow into it.

That’s the kind of mentorship I value, and the kind I try to offer others. I aim to be generous with my time, to connect people to resources and to other people who can help them move forward. Someone told me: a good mentor is someone who has walked the path you want to walk, is willing to share what they’ve learned, and does so with an open heart. That advice has stayed with me, both when I look to identify a new mentor and when I think about being a mentor for others.

I have been lucky enough to have had many wonderful mentors and as a result, I try to pay it forward. Whether it’s through CAPD, through the Brown alumni network, or even through LinkedIn, I want to be someone who shares what I’ve learned and creates opportunities for others to step into their own power so I aim to be receptive and helpful whenever anyone reaches out.

Early in graduate school, I realized I was struggling more than what felt like the “normal” amount. When it came time to ask for help, I hesitated to reach out through formal support channels, despite knowing they existed. Instead, I felt most comfortable turning to people who knew me as a whole person: a more senior graduate student with whom I shared many hobbies and who consistently checked in on me, and a professor who remembered specific details about my background and research interests. Both made time to listen, offered thoughtful advice, and helped guide me through some of my lowest moments. I credit them with helping me stay in graduate school.

Now that I am in a better place, I try to repay that care by supporting others through both formal and informal channels. As a member of the first cohort of graduate students in the Prescott lab, I work to build the kind of supportive community I once relied on. Beyond the lab, I serve as President of Graduate Womxn in Biology, play on the MIT Women’s Club Soccer team, and host personal statement writing workshops for outreach groups and MIT undergraduates.

Most importantly, I try to see and listen to the people around me. Many have shared that it is our small interactions, like smiling and asking how they are when we pass in the hall, offering a snack or encouragement after a difficult experiment, going for a walk when they need someone to listen, or being open about my own struggles that made them feel comfortable coming to me when they most needed support. I believe it is in these small, everyday moments that community is built, and that showing up consistently in the little moments is how people know they can count on you in the big ones.

During my time at MIT, I have served in several official and informal roles, including as a physics mentor, graduate research mentor, academic advocate, and event organizer. I have also been active in the Physics Graduate Student Council, where I served as president for two years and worked with department leadership to advocate for graduate students and strengthen the physics community.

These experiences shaped how I think about leadership. Leading with care means listening to the concerns of others, creating space for honest conversation, and working to ensure that people feel supported in a demanding academic environment. The mentorship and support I received during difficult moments in my own journey showed me how meaningful that kind of leadership can be, and it continues to guide how I try to support others in our community.