Maheen is a senior at Yale pursuing degrees in Political Science and Advanced French Language. She is a student in the Yale Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy, where her focus rests on studying the intersections of migration management and state-building in newly-independent states in the Global South. Maheen has focused a large degree of her research on assessing the capacity of post-colonial states to form sovereign borders and well-defined national identities, while developing humane asylum and refugee systems.

Maheen was born in Multan, Pakistan, and spent her childhood between Pakistan and Toronto, Canada. She has previously served as a Yale President’s Public Service Fellow, and held internships at the European Commission and the Prime Minister’s Office of Canada. She was the recipient of Yale’s John C. Shroeder Prize in her junior year, for contributions to public service and scholarship. Maheen has served as Political Chair, and later President, of Yalies for Pakistan, President of the Migration Alliance at Yale, and Executive Director of the Yale International Relations Leadership Institute. She works at the Yale Asian American Cultural Center, the Yale Undergraduate Admissions Office, and as a first-year counselor at Yale’s Grace Hopper College. In each of her academic and extracurricular pursuits, she has sought to remain connected to her Pakistani heritage and history.

She is excited to work with the Yalies for Pakistan in developing the Future of Pakistan conference, and providing Pakistani students across North America a forum for community, culture, and conversation for years to come.