Celebrating MIT's graduate student parents
Happy National Student Parent Month! This month, the Office of Graduate Education is featuring one graduate student parent per week, highlighting their academic work and parenting journey at MIT. Stay tuned for more student parent features!
Family: 1-year-old daughter, Anya, and wife Husna
Degree program: Leaders for Global Operations (LGO)
Years at MIT: Entering second year
Ahad Khan is a 2nd year student in MIT’s Leaders for Global Operations (LGO) program, a dual degree program that includes an MBA at the Sloan School of Management and a SM from the School of Engineering. Ahad’s work focuses on supply chain resiliency.
Finding community
Before being admitted to MIT, Ahad Khan spent eight and a half years working at Procter and Gamble in his home country, Pakistan, where he was recognized with the company’s highest individual honor, awarded to top 3% of global talent. Ahad and his wife also spent two years in Canada, where he gained valuable experience in the healthcare and education industries. His wife Husna’s career in data science and analytics has spanned several countries, academic institutions, and companies, before finally joining him as he embarked upon his MIT LGO journey. When he started the program in the Summer of 2024, the couple was expecting their first child!
The LGO program begins in early summer, and students have an intense academic course load before diving into the main program during the fall semester. At the end of the long “LGO Summer,” Ahad and his wife welcomed their daughter, Anya.
By that time, Ahad’s cohort had become a central support system.
“Our LGO community quite literally played the role of our family, starting with a meal train initiated by the only fellow LGO parent in my cohort,” Ahad shared. He was especially touched by the fact that his friends reached out to ask him about his family’s dietary restrictions and respected those meticulously.
Support from MIT faculty and staff
When Ahad and his wife first moved to Cambridge, they lived briefly in the Westgate family housing dorm on campus. He was pleased to find an immediate sense of community at Westgate. They were instantly in touch with the community through the resident WhatsApp channel and loved the sense of togetherness, especially during the plentiful events and the resident-favorite Wednesday evening snack gatherings.
Going through surgery to deliver a baby while being international students is extremely difficult, more so without any local support from one’s family. To seek support with the experience, Ahad engaged the Head of House at Westgate as well as the MIT Associate Dean of Housing, who thoughtfully listened and granted him a meaningful exception to the visitor policy so that his mother-in-law could visit the couple and help with the baby and his wife’s recovery.
One of the most thoughtful gifts came from one of Ahad’s program directors – a nursing rocking chair originally gifted to her by LGO students when she had her baby. They hope to pass it on to future LGO parents to continue the tradition.
In terms of academics, the combined support ecosystem of LGO and Sloan faculty, respective program offices, Ahad’s LGO classmates, and Ahad’s Sloan cohort (dubbed as “Ocean” at Sloan), and particularly his core teams, were instrumental in him not only surviving through extremely rigorous academics but thriving academically and socially throughout his dual-degree program.
As Ahad reflects on his journey into parenthood, he credits his community with easing this transition. “We were amazed by the kindness that our MIT fellows showered at us throughout our journey. At every step, everyone in the community has gone above and beyond with their empathy, and this has raised my personal bar as a peer or leader of someone going through parenthood.”
While Anya is too young to communicate aspirations of her own, Ahad and Husna hope that their experience of persevering through adversity to pursue the next step in their careers will spark an interest in her for pursuing STEM careers, potentially following in his father’s footsteps to attend MIT.
For more information on MIT’s support for students with children, please visit the MIT Families website or contact gradfamilies@mit.edu.
