Over the past year, I’ve experienced tremendous growth. One thing I keep coming back to is that none of it would have been possible without my education, the opportunities that education gave me, and the remarkable matriarchs who have stood ten toes down in supporting me every step of the way.
No matter how difficult life becomes, I’ve never truly felt the weight of the world on my shoulders because I know that behind every step I take are women who believe in me, encourage me, and remind me that I can keep going.
My journey in public health began long before I knew what public health even was.
It began with my maternal grandmother, Mas Houdou Barry.
Born in 1945, when Guinea was still under French colonial rule, she attended school and became a laboratory technician. As a child, I would visit her laboratory for my annual bloodwork and health checkups. I grew up hearing stories from my mother and my grandmother’s sister about how unwavering she was when it came to education. She corrected their grammar, pushed them to excel, and made it clear that finishing school wasn’t optional. It was expected.
That same determination was passed down to my mother.
Growing up in Guinea, I had tutors who came to our home every other day after a full day of school. When we moved to the United States, even though my mother was the head of a household of three while earning below the poverty line, she insisted that I focus on my education rather than getting a job in high school.
She understood something that I wouldn’t fully appreciate until much later: education is one of the greatest tools for social mobility.
It was never just about getting good grades. It was about creating opportunities that otherwise wouldn’t exist.
Growing up in a low-income household in the United States also taught me that hard work and potential are not always enough on their own. Sometimes, someone has to open the door.
For me, people did.
Teachers saw something in me and encouraged me to reach further. QuestBridge gave me access to colleges I might never have imagined were within reach. The Gates Millennium Scholarship helped make higher education possible without placing an impossible financial burden on my family. At different points in my life, people and organizations took a chance on me, invested in my potential, and gave me access to rooms I could not have entered on my own.
I think often about how different my life might look if they hadn’t.
Looking back, every opportunity I’ve had, from studying at Johns Hopkins, to becoming a Fulbright Scholar, to receiving the Gates Millennium Scholarship, to working with the United Nations, can be traced back not only to education, but also to the people who made sure that education was within my reach.
The Mas Houdou Future Leaders Fund is, in many ways, my attempt to hold that door open for someone else.
But access alone is not enough.
In Guinea, too many children enter school without being given the support they need to remain there and learn. UNICEF has reported that 34 percent of primary-school-age children and 47 percent of lower-secondary-school-age children are out of school. The barriers are particularly pronounced for children in vulnerable and rural communities, especially girls.
The learning gap is just as urgent. According to the World Bank, an estimated 83 percent of children in Guinea cannot read and understand a simple, age-appropriate text by age 10. Girls are also more likely than boys to experience schooling deprivation.
Behind those percentages are children.
A child who begins missing school because their family cannot afford basic supplies. A girl whose period becomes a reason to stay home. A student who begins falling behind in reading and gradually disengages. A child with a disability whose school wants to support them but does not yet have the tools to do so.
These are not always barriers that require enormous interventions. Sometimes what is missing is a system that notices early, asks why, responds appropriately, and follows up.
That is the gap we hope to help fill.
Today, I’m officially launching the Mas Houdou Future Leaders Fund, a nonprofit organization dedicated to expanding educational access and equity for children in Guinea, with an initial focus on rural communities and girls.
This project has been 15 years in the making.
It’s an idea I’ve carried with me since I was 13 years old. Along the way, I started an informal scholarship program, but I never believed I had the skills or experience to build an actual NGO.
Funny how imposter syndrome works.
I’ve realized that we’re often ready long before we believe we are.
So I’ve decided that this will be my year of taking risks. The year of choosing courage over comfort. The year of finally doing the things that have lived on my “one day” list for far too long.
Starting with one community
Our work will begin where our roots are: in rural Guinea.
Rather than assuming we already know what communities need, our goal is to work alongside schools, teachers, families, and local partners to identify the barriers keeping children from learning and respond with practical, locally appropriate support.
Our first initiative will put that approach into practice at a rural public primary school outside Kankan. We are developing a simple model to help schools identify when children are beginning to disengage from learning, understand the barriers behind it, connect them with appropriate support, and follow up. That support may look different for every child, from basic school materials and learning support to menstrual health resources, disability-responsive adaptations, or greater caregiver engagement.
Our goal is not to arrive with a solution designed thousands of miles away and declare that it works. It is to build alongside the community, learn what works, measure what changes, improve what doesn’t, and eventually create a model that other rural schools can adapt to their own needs.
Because education is not simply about putting a child in a classroom.
It is about making sure they have a meaningful opportunity to stay there, learn, progress, and imagine a future for themselves.
An ode to the women who made the path
The Mas Houdou Future Leaders Fund is named after my grandmother, but it represents something much larger than one woman or one family.
It is an ode to the women who created paths before we ever knew we would need them.
To the grandmother who was brave enough to attend school in colonial Guinea when it was difficult for women to access education.
To the mother who made education non-negotiable even when money was tight.
To the aunties, sisters, teachers, mentors, friends, and communities who invest in children without ever knowing exactly what that investment will become.
I’ve been incredibly fortunate to be surrounded by brilliant women, both family and friends, who invested in me before I could invest in myself.
None of us succeeds alone.
That has been especially true in building the Mas Houdou Future Leaders Fund.
One of the greatest gifts of this journey has been the women who agreed to build it alongside me. Our Board of Directors is made up entirely of women I deeply admire, each bringing her own experiences, expertise, and perspective to this work. When I first shared this idea, they did not need convincing. They showed up, offered their time, challenged me to think bigger, and supported a vision that was still taking shape simply because they believed in its potential as much as I did.
There is something especially meaningful about building an organization named after a woman who championed education alongside a board of women who are now carrying that same belief forward.
They remind me that community is not only the people we serve. Community is also the people who choose to serve beside us.
My own story is proof of that. Scholarships opened doors. Teachers taught me. Mentors advocated for me. Family members sacrificed for me. Friends believed in ideas before they were fully formed. And now, an incredible group of women has trusted me enough to help turn one of those ideas into something real.
That is the kind of community we hope to build through the Mas Houdou Future Leaders Fund: one where we invest in one another, where opportunity is something we create together, and where the success of one generation becomes the foundation for the next.
And I hope you’ll be part of it.
Whether you donate, partner with us, volunteer your expertise, share our work, introduce us to someone who should know about it, or simply follow along as we learn, you are helping us build something that I hope will outlive all of us.
If even one child gains access to opportunities that change the trajectory of their life the way education changed mine, every ounce of effort will be worth it.
But our hope is much bigger than one child.
It is that, years from now, there will be children who can look back at the mothers, grandmothers, teachers, families, communities, and people they may never even meet who helped keep a door open for them and understand, as I have come to understand:
I am because they were.
Welcome to the Mas Houdou Future Leaders Fund.
We’re just getting started.