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Humans of Duke Sanford

My time in the tech industry as a risk analyst for Meta Inc. (fka Facebook) made me fall in love with tech policy. That’s where Sanford came in; I wanted to attend a school that had a tech policy concentration and brilliant leaders to learn from. I am also honored to be a Thomas Pickering Fellow with the State Department and will be entering the foreign service as a diplomat after Sanford! I am glad to be taking both tech and foreign policy courses to prepare me for this exciting career. I particularly want to focus on how we as future policymakers can understand the implications of existing and new technologies on societies and governments. Subfocus includes data rights, discriminatory technologies, and internet freedom. I love how I can take courses at different schools to grapple and challenge my thinking, like my current Privacy Law class at Duke Law. Events at Duke like Baldwin scholar Dr. Ruha Benjamin’s “Race after Technology” helped me answer these questions. Outside of Sanford, I am training to become a yoga instructor. My yoga studio implemented a scholarship for Black “yogis” in the wake of the 2020 BLM protests. They not only acknowledged the disproportionate lack of Black yoga instructors and participants, they removed the barriers that enabled the disparity. As I explore what policy leadership looks to me, I want to bring the values of yoga and its necessity for emotional and mental wellbeing to the forefront of my tech policy work. As future policymakers, I see us with creative capabilities to use policy as an opportunity to reimagine our communities! The people at Sanford and the relationships I have made have been transformative. Having friends to support and uplift me during a global pandemic has made me feel empowered and optimistic. I am most proud of my tenacity. I have chosen to fail forward, learn as much as I can, and exercise gratitude. I strongly believe that our identity is not defined by our productivity, we are human beings first, doers next. - Mona Zahir (MPP ‘23) is from Charlotte, North Carolina. Mona loves to cook, socialize with friends, practice yoga, and watch documentaries.

My time in the tech industry as a risk analyst for Meta Inc. (fka Facebook) made me fall in love with tech policy. That’s where Sanford came in; I wanted to attend a school that had a tech policy concentration and brilliant leaders to learn from. I am also honored to be a Thomas Pickering Fellow with the State Department and will be entering the foreign service as a diplomat after Sanford! I am glad to be taking both tech and foreign policy courses to prepare me for this exciting career.

I particularly want to focus on how we as future policymakers can understand the implications of existing and new technologies on societies and governments. Subfocus includes data rights, discriminatory technologies, and internet freedom. I love how I can take courses at different schools to grapple and challenge my thinking, like my current Privacy Law class at Duke Law. Events at Duke like Baldwin scholar Dr. Ruha Benjamin’s “Race after Technology” helped me answer these questions.

Outside of Sanford, I am training to become a yoga instructor. My yoga studio implemented a scholarship for Black “yogis” in the wake of the 2020 BLM protests. They not only acknowledged the disproportionate lack of Black yoga instructors and participants, they removed the barriers that enabled the disparity. As I explore what policy leadership looks to me, I want to bring the values of yoga and its necessity for emotional and mental wellbeing to the forefront of my tech policy work. As future policymakers, I see us with creative capabilities to use policy as an opportunity to reimagine our communities!

The people at Sanford and the relationships I have made have been transformative. Having friends to support and uplift me during a global pandemic has made me feel empowered and optimistic. I am most proud of my tenacity. I have chosen to fail forward, learn as much as I can, and exercise gratitude. I strongly believe that our identity is not defined by our productivity, we are human beings first, doers next.

– Mona Zahir (MPP ‘23) is from Charlotte, North Carolina. Mona loves to cook, socialize with friends, practice yoga, and watch documentaries. #HumansofDukeSanford #MPP #gradschool

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