By Carolyn Gray Anderson
Sana Rahim (FEMBA ’19) is the recipient of a 2017 John Wooden Global Leadership Fellowship, which rewards students who embody Coach Wooden’s leadership ideals and commitment to improving the lives of others. And if, as Wooden believed, adversity is an asset, Rahim has risen to the challenge — primarily in the interest of helping other people.
Rahim is an observant Muslim American whose parents hail from Pakistan. She is a brown-skinned woman pursuing an MBA. She grew up a distinct minority in the Wyoming town of Laramie, and later moved with her family to Naperville, Illinois, where she proudly became her high school’s first homecoming queen in hijab. In adulthood, amid worldwide trends toward divisiveness along political, religious, gender and cultural lines, she has traveled widely and faced her share of prejudice and setbacks.
But the former sales manager for industrial supply company McMaster-Carr says, “Although my ‘roots’ presented me with a number of challenges, they motivated me.” Her immigrant parents instilled in her a great sense of achievement, worthiness and responsibility. These influences protected her from insecurity.
When she arrived at UCLA and examined John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success for the first time, Coach’s “Team Spirit” block resonated. Rahim works in the interest of pro-social causes as a communications consultant with the United Nations Development Programme, as a member of the student advisory board of the UCLA Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion and, at Anderson, as a strategic business consultant at the Price Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation’s UCLA Head Start Management Fellows Program.
Years earlier, she interrupted her own higher education when her family faced a sudden need for financial support. “For two years, I was literally handing my paycheck to my mom,” she recalls. But she had already learned to be entrepreneurial and she helped her mother — whom she describes as “talented and aggressive” — build a Chicago-based business working with designers of Pakistani bridal and formal wear. Now her mom is the “Midwestern queen” of Pakistani brides’ needs.
“You have to make sacrifices and hard decisions that are not glamorous, but are good for the team,” says Rahim. Reflecting on Coach Wooden’s humility, she says, “His leadership style was different than the stereotype. He wasn’t an alpha male obsessed with winning. He felt he was managing a family; he thought about what motivates people and how you inspire them to do their best, to achieve maximum potential.”
Rahim says enrolling at Anderson was something she did for herself following a period of necessary team support, but she is still looking outward to determine how best to share her success, how her MBA can be used in the service of a global community — her teammates, as it were.
Last May, Rahim received a Hilton Fellowship from the WORLD Policy Analysis Center to work at the United Nations in Istanbul — where she had also studied abroad as an undergraduate political science major at Northwestern. She spent the summer of 2017 contributing to projects related to the UN’s sustainable development goals, namely the SDG Philanthropy Platform.
What’s next for Sana Rahim? She has applied for the WORLD’s Global Inequality Research Fellowship and she aspires to steward diversity and inclusion in corporate contexts. Globally, she says, “It has never been more important to remember John Wooden’s values of inclusiveness, respect and compassion. In my adult life, I have never felt like they were more crucial.”
In the spirit of One Anderson, she strives to speak up for campus inclusiveness, particularly on behalf of Muslims and women. She is influenced by the unapologetic female managers who have mentored her, as well as by historical figures. “In Islam, the Prophet Mohammed’s first wife, Khadijah, was a businesswoman,” she says. “She hired the Prophet to work for her and she proposed to him. She was the financial support for the family. She was nurturing and capable and entrepreneurial. She was fierce.”
The John Wooden Fellowships are among the most prestigious honors UCLA Anderson students can receive. Named for John Wooden, UCLA’s legendary coach, leadership philosopher and exemplar, the fellowships are awarded annually to MBA students who embody Coach Wooden’s values-based leadership. Essential components of this style include a focus on ethics, team spirit, skill, hard work and loyalty, along with a commitment to constant learning, continual improvement and innovation. Each fellowship is worth $25,000 and is funded by the annual John Wooden Global Leadership Awards Dinner.
The 2017 John Wooden Global Leadership Awards ceremony takes place on November 13, honoring Kevin Plank, founder, CEO and chairman of Under Armour, and John Wooden Global Leadership fellows Evan Barnes (EMBA ’18), Anna Goldberg (MBA ’18), Sana Rahim (FEMBA ’19) and Brandon Scott (MBA/M.D. ’18).
Congratulations Sana. You inspired all of us Monday evening. Your comments were warm, funny, and moving. It was so beautiful that you could wear one of your mother's garments as you accepted your Wooden Fellow honor. You made us proud!
Posted by: Dylan Stafford | 11/18/2017 at 07:07 AM