Mariam Khursheed Ahmed is an MPH candidate at Harvard. Before Harvard, she was an analytics consultant at McKinsey & Company and QuantumBlack. During her tenure, she deployed advanced analytics solutions and strategic frameworks to optimize operations, improve patient outcomes, reduce physician burnout, and drive growth for leading healthcare organizations across North America and the MENA region.
Mariam’s journey began in software engineering, where she fast-tracked a five-year program in three years. During this time, she worked on innovative projects like automating traffic accident detection to ensure timely medical aid and developing an emergency call interface for the deaf and mute community. Her passion for solving real-world problems with AI led her to Prince Sultan University’s Robotics & IoT Lab, where she developed a chatbot to support the admissions department. Concurrently, she collaborated with MIT’s HCI Lab as a CoCreate Mentor, working on an Arabic Mental Health Chatbot.
As a third-culture kid, Mariam appreciates the complexities and nuances of representing multiple cultures and identities. This unique perspective fuels her commitment to giving back through pro-bono consulting and mentoring the younger generation. She is deeply passionate about social impact entrepreneurship and philanthropy, focusing on enhancing the lives of children and women in underserved communities.
Beyond her professional pursuits, Mariam is an avid baker and enjoys dabbling in improv. She has a unique talent for reading and writing laterally inverted and upside-down texts. In her free time, she engages in various writing projects across different genres.