Abdisamad Adan is the first Somali undergraduate in decades to be accepted to Harvard.
One of 19 siblings who grew up without electricity or indoor plumbing, he is one of the growing number of success stories to come from a unique African high school that is working on getting its students into top colleges on full scholarships.
“I didn’t picture my life leading me to Harvard or anything like it,” Adan said.
Adan is a former student of the Abaarso School of Science and Technology in Somaliland — a self-declared republic still internationally considered to be part of Somalia.
Adan, now studying economics at Harvard, gives a lot of credit to Jonathan Starr for his success.
Starr is a former hedge fund manager — an American with an uncle from Somaliland — who wanted to do something different and “fun” after success in the financial world. He opened the Abaarso school, which has both male and female students, in 2008. Aden is one of many to move from there to elite international institutions after graduation.
He tells The Current’s Anna Maria Tremonti that getting girls to come to school at the start was extremely difficult but now there are tons of female applicants.
“Ultimately, the boys actually became terrific supporters of the girls — it just took time. I think it was very foreign to them. And for me, I felt like they had to see that these girls were their equals.”
Aden says seeing girls succeed in school gives him hope for the future.
“[Girls are] encouraged to think big and to want to one day lead their country, and that has been actually transformational Starr doesn’t consider himself a “traditional do-gooder.”
“I was much, much more intense,” he tells The Current’s Anna Maria Tremonti.
“The cliche is usually that they donate money. And I did donate money. But I moved there. I lived on campus. I was with the students 18 hours a day.”
