About Ahmed

I was born in Pakistan and raised in North Carolina, where I tried everything I could get my hands on. Sports like soccer, tennis, and even football (though I was just the kicker). Theater, chorus, quiz bowls, blood drives, teen court programs. I was the classic overachiever, which eventually landed me at Harvard. That’s also where I got hit with major imposter syndrome. I was surrounded by brilliance and felt like I didn’t belong. But I stuck with it, found what I cared about, and graduated with honors in chemistry. After college, I had no idea what I wanted to do. So I took the “safe” route into management consulting at Parthenon. I was good at it because structured thinking and problem-solving made sense to me, but I wanted more meaning. I moved into tech, working in strategy at LinkedIn as a kind of chief of staff to executives. I liked the variety, but I still couldn’t find one niche to settle into. Eventually, I started my own edtech company. It was an operating system for trade schools. The work was exciting and intense, and I learned a lot, but the stress wasn’t sustainable given everything else going on in my life. That experience helped me figure out what I was actually solving for. Becoming a chief of staff was the first time everything clicked. I didn’t have to specialize. I got to work across functions, contribute meaningfully, and stay close to what I enjoyed. I could be a generalist without the pressure of being a founder or a people manager. It felt like the most authentic choice I had made in my career. That role also opened the door for me to move into deep tech, a space I probably wouldn’t have had access to otherwise. Along the way, my own journey in self-discovery, figuring out how to negotiate for myself and network in ways that actually worked, gave me tools and frameworks that made things actionable. I started talking to friends who were stuck in similar places. Then their friends reached out. Before I knew it, I was having regular calls with people navigating tough career questions that looked a lot like the ones I had faced. It’s not fun being lost and unsure how to break things down into manageable, sequenced steps. I love doing that for others. It’s energizing, it’s useful, and it’s good karma.