Soraya Mohideen
Harvard South Africa Fellow
Harvard Kennedy School Mid-Career Master in Public Administration
Harvard Kennedy School Mid-Career Master in Public Administration
Soraya Mohideen is a mid-career Master in Public Administration graduate student at Harvard Kennedy School. Soraya hails from Cape Town, South Africa, where she graduated with distinction from the University of Cape Town 10 years into her career, earning a first-class honors degree in Information Systems. For more than 20 years, Soraya has worked in tech and economic development. Before joining the Harvard Kennedy School, Soraya worked in local government at the City of Cape Town as a Principal responsible for catalytic sector development and growth coalitions. Between 2018-2021, Soraya and her team at Africa's oldest tech incubator unlocked nearly $15 million in salaries and 3,663 job opportunities for 2,268 previously unemployed South Africans, through stimulating the tech-enabled economy and delivering skills development and job placement into the market. She is determined to tackle youth unemployment in the Global South. Soraya is pursuing the HKS MPA to gain the economic development skills needed to make a broader, scaled impact towards job creation and economic development.