A Life in Motion — and the Stories It Left Behind

Welcome. I am a scholar, educator, writer, and lifelong learner — a South Asian immigrant woman who has spent a life crossing borders, both geographic and intellectual. This is my space to share what I have learned, what I am still learning, and what I believe is worth saying out loud.

"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever."— MAHATMA GANDHI

As a nontraditional student, mother of two, and South Asian immigrant woman, Gandhi's words have never felt abstract to me. They describe a way of moving through the world that I have had no choice but to practice — not as a philosophy, but as a daily reality. Learning, for me, has always been less a credential and more a lifeline.

My strength lies in multicultural competence, gender sensitivity, and diversity awareness — not as buzzwords on a resume, but as qualities forged through lived experience. From being an international student and a Muslim immigrant to raising two children across continents, my emotional intelligence, patience, and compassion were earned, not studied.

I taught undergraduate students at the Women and Gender Studies Department, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh, from 2004 to 2014 — meeting students from the capital city, distant villages, and everything in between. During my three years as departmental Chair, I worked closely with students from all economic and social strata. Their stories of financial hardship, of tutoring schoolchildren to earn pocket money, of navigating student politics to secure a room in the residential halls — these stories cracked open something in me. They revealed my own blind spots and the profound inequality of access that runs through every educational system.

FROM THE DHAKA YEARS

The tides shifted when I visited the USA as a Fulbright scholar after the new world order of post-9/11. The horrendous experience of standing in a separate, longer immigration queue at Heathrow Airport with my five-year-old son — for no reason other than representing a Muslim country — is etched permanently in my memory. The tensed and dejected look of the immigration officers, the harsh physical check, the sudden visible separation from what the world considered the "safe" queue. I had no answer to my son's question: "Mom, why do we have to stand in a different line from them?"

As I settled into my graduate program at Rutgers University, that anxiety slowly began to evaporate. My interactions with the Rutgers International Student Office were a genuine relief — the warmth, the orientation, the practical guidance for a first-time international student. That experience planted a seed: I understood, from the inside, what it means to need that kind of support, and what it means when it is done well.

The years that followed took me across three continents before I ever arrived in New York. A leadership training in Bangkok introduced me to sixty ActionAid employees from across the globe and to village communities whose livelihoods were upended by a dam. A visit to the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg was a self-revelation — it dismantled every stereotyped image of Africa I had unknowingly carried. A research workshop at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, Netherlands, offered a brief but memorable encounter with European academic culture. These were not itinerary items. They were an education in the truest sense.

On a personal level, I come from a family of educators — both my parents were graduate degree holders and teachers. My daughter was born with a congenital illness; my countless sleepless nights as her caregiver taught me a patience that no classroom can replicate. When my son faced adjustment difficulties in his early years in the United States, I made the decision to take a career break and be present for my children. That time became one of the most formative periods of my life — full of self-reflection, of watching and listening, of becoming more deeply human.

In 2015, we drove from Atlanta to New York. Tired from the road, I walked into a five-star hotel in Virginia to ask about the tariff. The receptionist looked at me — my weary face, perhaps my skin color — and said: "You know what, there is a motel across the street. I think it will be more suitable for you." What happened next is less important than what I whispered to myself afterward: "There is still a long way to go till we get there."

That road eventually led me to Baruch College, where I completed my Master of Science in Higher Education Administration — graduating with a 4.0 GPA, earning the Marxe Scholarship, the Stephen J. Jerome Scholarship, the Marxe Dean's Excellence Award, and induction into the Pi Alpha Alpha Honor Society. It was a homecoming of sorts: a return to the scholarly life I had built in Dhaka, now sharpened by new frameworks, new questions, and a new country. My academic journey spans two continents — a BA and PhD in Women and Gender Studies from the University of Dhaka, a Fulbright MA from Rutgers University, and now this MS from Baruch. Each degree has added a layer. Each has changed me.

WHY THIS WEBSITE

Archiving a Life's Work — for Myself and for Others

This website was born from a simple conviction: that a rich and diverse body of experience and scholarly work should not sit in a folder on a hard drive. It should live somewhere accessible — where it can be useful to others, where it can be challenged and built upon, where it can continue to grow.

I have spent decades crossing professional, academic, and cultural borders. I have taught, researched, advised, written, raised children, navigated immigration, and sat with some of the most important questions in education and social justice. I want to document that journey — not for self-promotion, but for the same reason I have always valued education: because knowledge shared is knowledge multiplied.

This is a living archive. You will find here my academic papers from my MS program in Higher Education Administration — researched, updated with current data, and adapted for a broader readership. But you will also find much more.

This site will evolve — and so will I. New pieces will be added as I write them, new ideas as I encounter them, new findings as my doctoral research develops. It is not a finished product. It is an ongoing conversation — and you are warmly invited to be part of it.

A NOTE OF GRATITUDE

This Website Is a Gift

This website exists because of the encouragement and generosity of a dear friend — Mohammed Kabir (MJ Kabir), serial entrepreneur, tech visionary, author, and philanthropist based in Rocklin, Northern California.

MJ Kabir is the founder of pioneering technology companies including AKTIFUL, EVOKNOW, INTEVO, and SacSoft — organizations recognized for their groundbreaking work in web technologies, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence. A prolific author of dozens of books on web programming, Linux security, cloud infrastructure, and AI, he has dedicated his career not only to building businesses but to building knowledge — making complex technology accessible to professionals and students worldwide. His commitment to K-12 STEM education and his work empowering mid-size enterprises with transformative technology reflect a philosophy that echoes my own: that expertise is most meaningful when it is shared.

It was MJ Kabir who saw the value in archiving my work before I fully did — who said, in his quiet and generous way, that these stories and these ideas deserved a home of their own. This website is that home. It is also, in no small part, his gift to me. I am deeply grateful.

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The long way to "get there" — to an equal, just, and genuinely multicultural world — is still being walked. Everything on this website is, in one way or another, a step in that direction. I hope something here speaks to you, challenges you, or simply reminds you that you are not alone in asking the hard questions.

Thank you for being here.

Pi Alpha Alpha Honor Society  ·  Marxe Dean's Excellence Award
Marxe Scholarship  ·  Stephen J. Jerome Scholarship  ·  GPA: 4.0
MS in Higher Education Administration, Baruch College, CUNY (2022)
MA, Women's & Gender Studies, Rutgers University — Fulbright Scholar (2006)
PhD & BA, Women and Gender Studies / Public Administration, University of Dhaka© Soheli K. Azad soheli_azad@yahoo.com  ·  LinkedIn