Sara Sultan

Hi, I am Sara Sultan and I want to use this opportunity to talk about my struggles and how I established a coaching platform. I am from a family of four sisters and a younger brother. Being the eldest meant I had several responsibilities. My younger siblings looked up to me for everything, and I had to be very careful about every step I would take. I was fortunate enough to have a supportive family, especially my mother, who always strived to educate me and achieve my dreams. I am very dear to my dad and his support also has helped me get where I am today. However, society (community, social circles, and even extended family) always manages to creep in and have an unnecessary influence. They looked down upon us for having no elder brothers and as my father would work abroad, this was even more pronounced. They trivialized the importance of education, claiming that pursuing a degree would prevent us from making a proper home and incapable of finding a husband. The attempts to bring us down only fuelled us further. I liked space studies, but I sensed that Pakistan lacks the resources and opportunities in those fields. This driven me to search online
courses at MIT through a platform called edX. I began with an electromagnetic course by Walter Lewin and fell in love with it, even though I previously did not enjoy this subject at my university. I took other courses as well, including writing courses which I thoroughly enjoy as a hobby.
I completed a 3-course series in writing to earn a certificate from the University of California, Berkeley, and the accomplishmentslike these motivated me to sail through some of the hardest times of my life. The turning point in my academic life was when I enrolled in a course called ‘Solar Energy’ through TU Delft. The global energy-water issues and renewable resources caught my interest.
I had aspired to attend the National University of Science and Technology (NUST) and they had a Centre of Energy Systems through which I enrolled in a master’s course in Energy Systems Engineering. I thoroughly enjoyed this course, as well as the beautiful campus in the heart of my beloved city, Islamabad. Of course, this was a challenging time as well. My parents were struggling financially, and this meant I had
to take a loan to pay off the school fees for my first semester. Following this, I received a scholarship for the rest of my program and attended an exchange semester at Oregon State University. I had an amazing experience traveling to Corvallis, exploring campus, and working on a hydropower project with Dr. Kendra Sharp.
I watched Smurfs long ago, and the moment glued to my memory when they enter the human world. We watch the movie and the entire story from their eyes. Looking at the big cities like Los Angeles and Paris, they were awestruck. It had curiosity, a thirst to learn, and cuteness too in their expressions while discovering about humans. I could relate to that; every new place or culture feels like a fantasy. There is so much to the world, people from a new culture, language, landscapes, and technology. I wanted to explore all that on my own; I wanted to travel and of course to get a world-class education. While I was traveling to Oregon with my fellows from NUST, our flight crossed through Los Angeles. I was so thrilled to land there, and it
reminded me of Smurfs. Besides new culture, technology, and research facilities, I think the liberty we get as a woman compared to my hometown, was most valuable to me. Any decision I make is mine and mine alone here, but back home ignoring everyone contributing their thoughts, even when not prompted, was extremely difficult. I feel that any choice one makes, be it a man or woman, should be their call. No one should impose anything on anyone, but this is a genuine struggle back home, especially for women. While I admire our culture’s hospitality where we all help each other, it is possible to cross personal boundaries, invading personal space.
This is what I want to fight.
After coming back from the exchange program, I started working on my Graduate School application. I received a prestigious fellowship from the U.S. Department of Energy for my Ph.D. at the University of Tennessee Knoxville, and an option to work at Oak Ridge National Laboratory for my research, which I gladly accepted. When I was traveling to Tennessee for the first time, I was all alone with more pieces of luggage than I could handle, yet my heart was racing with excitement. I was about to start my own life, which was scary but also exhilarating. As it stands now, I am fully independent. But this independence makes me wonder about my sisters and all the individuals back home that are struggling. I have learned the importance of making a choice and taking firm decisions which can be very challenging but could be made easier with the right guidance. After coming to Tennessee, I strengthened our NUST alumni bond and found my school’s alum chapter. We offered a coaching program to deliver webinars on topics such as planning research, writing an abstract and literature review, writing academic essays, and many more. I felt this was a good place to change the lives of many by helping them with skills that are necessary for this field. I engaged with NUSTIAN USA (a non-profit organization) and established a coaching program for them as well, where we could facilitate
over 300 people for graduate studies in the U.S. This time; it was not just the webinars or blogs, but it grew into a personalized mentoring platform. Those requiring individual coaching could sign up to be paired with an appropriate mentor. To me, the relationship between a mentor and a mentee is beautiful. It is free from the fear of judgment and becomes a safe space to receive support for accomplishing
goals and overcoming challenges. However, even with all this growth and success, I felt it was not working as well as I would have hoped for women. I found that there were typically fewer females, and those present were not vocal enough, not willing to share their challenges. I then created a separate platform where they could feel safe sharing their stories. The communication gap can still be a struggle, but I believe with time, they will open further and reach out for help and guidance. I will keep striving to achieve this.
On a personal level, I had to battle many societal and cultural pressures, but I came through which I can use to prevent others from facing similar hardships. I learned that there are a lot of groups to aid with scholarships, but they lack empathy and compassion for those in need. It is highly likely that those running such platforms have either not faced these struggles themselves or cannot relate to those who have. Their knowledge is thus limited. I trust, through experience, combined with skills, we can offer the best. Besides my female mentoring initiative, I additionally co-founded a unique personalized mentoring platform ‘Coaching Alley’ with my husband. Every day we both receive a lot of emails and messages, some coaching requests, and some success stories from our mentoring services, and it all just makes me so proud and happy to see the impact that we have and will continue to create. This is our best investment for the future of our country and humanity, which will last forever.