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Resilience, Innovation, and Education: Meet Rahim S. Rajan, Founder & CEO of AQL Labs
What's your personal story?
I am a first-generation college graduate and a first-generation American. In the early 1970s, my family moved to North America (first to Canada) after being forced into exile in Rwanda. We later relocated to the US in the early 1980s and I recently discovered that my family and I became legal residents of the United States under the immigration amnesty that occurred during the presidency of Ronald Reagan in 1986. My parents' aim in coming to this country was for their children to benefit from the education system. Though my parents later moved back to Rwanda, my siblings and I remained here to further our education. I completed my undergraduate studies at both Boston University and the University of Chicago and then pursued graduate school in the UK at Cambridge. I've witnessed a lot of change in this country and have lived in various places, including California, Texas, Massachusetts, Illinois, New York, and currently Washington. This journey, filled with challenges and opportunities, has instilled in me a deep sense of resilience and determination.
Over the past couple of decades, I've worked at the forefront of helping colleges and universities worldwide leverage technological advances to further their teaching, learning, and research missions. My work was instrumental in the growth and diversification of JSTOR, a digital archive that today serves the globe. In 2011, my family and I moved to Seattle from NYC so that I could join the Postsecondary Success strategy at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Here, I led a nascent digital learning portfolio and eventually expanded and rebuilt the entire technology-enabled Solutions and Innovations team within the strategy as a Deputy Director, making significant contributions to scaling evidence-based innovations in the field of education, policy, and education technology.
In 2023, after 12 years at the foundation, I decided to pursue entrepreneurship. I am
building a social venture with a former colleague called AQL Labs. AQL Labs is dedicated to helping the US and global higher education sectors innovate and better serve learners during significant technological innovation and disruption. We aim to create sustainable, high-impact education technology innovations through new partnerships with the higher education sector and novel impact-focused venture financing models. We also seek to dramatically advance capability in data, machine learning, AI, and analytics infrastructure for the New Majority serving postsecondary institutions.
What key moments in your life led you to where you are today?
I am reminded of a few critical moments. First, my mother, the youngest of thirteen siblings, very much desired to pursue a university education in nursing while growing up in Uganda but was never able to. Later, when I was in graduate school in the UK, my mother passed away suddenly. That experience and the care and support I received have always inspired me to appreciate the importance of the opportunities I had access to, caring for others and recognizing how much learners may carry or deal with at any given moment. I have also lived through two historical tragedies that have reinforced education and literacy's incredible influence on a society’s trajectory and vitality. When I completed my undergraduate education, I traveled back to Rwanda to help my parents with their family business, only to witness a society unraveling and the beginning of the 1994 genocide. Later, in NYC, I lived through the terrible terrorist attacks of 9/11. We live in a world that desperately needs step-level improvements in access to quality education to build a world that can sustain future generations. I want to help develop and enable that for a better tomorrow.
Where does your passion to serve come from?
I’ve always been inspired by the incredible sacrifices and examples of others, including my wife, parents, siblings, and countless community members, teachers, professors, managers, and friends who also invested in my growth, education, and leadership. Their optimism and care have been invaluable in shaping my journey and helping me become who I am today.
How can GlobalMindED help you reach your goals?
GlobalMindED, with its focus on access and equity in education and serving a broad and diverse community of first-generation learners, can be a valuable partner as I continue to seek to innovate and improve our global higher education sector. Ultimately, the most successful innovations must generate real value for today's learners. I am eager to explore potential collaborations and continue learning from the student leaders contributing to GlobalMindED’s vital mission.
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