Support Future Leader Dilnaz on Her Journey to Harvard
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Help Dilnaz Attend Harvard - Support a future leader of innovations
From studying in storage rooms to earning a place at Harvard, I worked hard my whole life to gain irreplaceable experience and bring positive change to the world. After spending years pushing boundaries in education and tech, I am now facing one myself.
I earned a place at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, but even after gaining their maximum need-based financial aid, I still need $78,000 to afford it.
This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and it means a lot to me. I worked day and night for years to achieve it. So I ask for your help to get a chance to attend Harvard, so that students who need motivated changemakers to improve the education system get my support.
My Story: Why Education Matters
Growing up, my school, Bilim Innovation School for Gifted Girls, one of the top public institutions for girls in Kazakhstan, had no permanent building or proper funding. We moved from storage rooms to borrowed classrooms, often studying in cramped spaces. That paradox, being part of a high-achieving school with so few resources, first led me to question how education is funded, valued, and delivered. But that wasn’t the only catalyst behind my mission.
My cousin, one of the kindest and most curious people I know, had to drop out of school due to persistent bullying and the system’s failure to understand his neurodiversity. The stress from constant mistreatment and the lack of awareness among educators worsened his condition, eventually making it impossible for him to continue in traditional educational institutions. Financial limitations then became another barrier to accessing more suitable learning environments.
Watching his love for learning extinguished by a rigid, under-resourced, and often unempathetic system convinced me that education must evolve to serve every learner, not just those who fit the mold.
Now, after years of hard work and dedication, I’ve been accepted to Harvard, where I will continue this mission of transforming education.
Your support can help me get there.
Why Harvard? Why Learning Design, Innovation, and Technology Program (LDIT)?
After gaining a scholarship to Minerva, the world’s most innovative institution, I realized that my high school education prepared me to excel in exams, but it hadn’t taught me to think critically. Living and studying in seven countries, including the USA, South Korea, Taiwan, and Argentina, challenged me to navigate cultural nuances and global challenges. These experiences reshaped my understanding of education: knowledge isn't just content; it's context. It’s how we apply, share, and evolve it.
In summer 2024, I worked at Ainia AI, a Palo Alto startup that uses storytelling and AI-generated conversations to teach children social-emotional skills. This experience opened my eyes - the future of education isn’t video lectures but deeply personalized learning powered by AI. Therefore, I want to learn how to create and drive these innovations.
I started my persona project and spent 2024 gathering data on teaching performance. I collaborated with the Head of Kazakhstan's Education Department to investigate why only 57% of teachers in the Atyrau Region passed the teaching skill assessment in 2023. Through interviews with Kazakhstani teachers, I uncovered the main issue: the scarcity of resources in local languages to teach social-emotional and effective teaching skills, creating barriers to essential knowledge.
To address the issue of resource scarcity, I have already designed an MVP for the “EquityEdu” platform, featuring practice exercises for teachers. However, designing a platform is only one step. The most important part of the project - creating learning content for teachers - remains a challenge.
How to design learning resources for adult learners, specifically teachers across the education sector?
Therefore, the LDIT at Harvard is a perfect program to prepare me to be a leader in innovation and education. I am convinced that courses like How People Learn with Professor Eric Soto-Shed and guidance from Professor Daniel Wilson will help me build digital environments of trust and curiosity.
LDIT is one of the few programs that not only teaches human-centered design but also allows students to test ideas through cutting-edge labs like the Harvard Innovation Lab. Courses across Harvard and MIT will help me deepen my computational and social science skills to develop effective, equitable digital learning tools.
Therefore, this isn’t just about me attending Harvard. It’s about gaining the skills and community to drive systemic change in Kazakhstan and beyond, where the potential of students is being overlooked.
[You can learn more about EquityEdu through this link.]
What I've Done So Far
Currently, I am leading growth strategies at a Kazakhstani Startup, Kashgari, which aims to revolutionize Kazakh language learning. The team has already developed the first immersive dictionary of the Kazakh language, an AI platform for school education, and is actively continuing to develop our ecosystem to ensure that every student and teacher in the country has access to quality learning tools.
Previously, I’ve successfully turned all barriers into stepping stones regardless of systemic challenges:
- Despite studying in storage rooms, I graduated high school with a perfect 5.0 GPA and was awarded Kazakhstan’s Altyn Belgi Gold Medal, an honor reserved for the nation’s top-performing students.
- Beyond academics, I organized intercultural events with the Japanese Embassy to support children affected by nuclear test site exposure. I co-led city-wide cultural initiatives with the Kazakhstan-Japan Center and Astana City Council, believing early on in the power of education and cultural awareness to unite communities.
- Coming from an underfunded school, I knew how few opportunities there are for students to practice international languages and develop interpersonal skills. So I trained 500+ students to volunteer in international events like Ironman and the Green Growth Forum.
- I consistently earned top placements in Olympiads, including 1st place in Math. Once, as a middle schooler, I competed in a capital-wide Chemistry Olympiad against high school upperclassmen and secured 4th place, proving to my teachers that I deserved a spot on the Chemistry Olympiad team.
- In 2020, I received a scholarship from Minerva University, one of the world’s most innovative and competitive institutions, where I successfully double-majored in computational sciences and economics, maintaining a 3.5 GPA out of 4.0 while living and working in 7 countries. There, I witnessed world issues firsthand and solved them alongside local organizations ranging from NPOs to international giants like Visa Inc.
- In 2021, I helped South Korea’s radio broadcasting company TBS collect useful data for a documentary podcast dedicated to fostering understanding between local and immigrant communities in Seoul. Our team was able to reach figures like Jasmin Lee, a former Member of the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea, to cooperate on this project.
- In 2022, I worked with an Argentinian NPO, Asemco, to support children with autism and their tutors. Observing that Asemco’s tutors spent excessive time manually recording behavioral data on paper before transferring it to Excel, I worked on strategies to streamline the data collection process to reduce data double entry, to give tutors more time on what is important - engaging and building bonds with the children.
In 2023, I worked as a product manager intern at Visa Inc., where I led a campaign to introduce a new money transfer product that would change banking habits in Uzbekistan.
In 2024, my academic achievements were recognized, and I spent my senior years as a Teaching and Research Assistant in economics, instructing 180 Minerva students across all grades.
[Feel free to get to know more through my LinkedIn profile .]
The challenge and why this campaign exists
Although I’ve received Harvard’s maximum need-based financial aid of $23,000, I still need to raise $78,000 to enroll:
- $45,000 for remaining tuition and university fees
- $33,000 for required living expenses
My family - just me, my mom, and my 16-year-old brother - is committed to investing everything we have in education. But in a single-mother household in an economically unstable country, saving is a luxury. Aware of our financial constraints, I’ve worked hard since landing my first job after graduation, but most of my income has gone toward supporting my family and covering financial obligations.
That’s why I actively apply to every scholarship I’m eligible for. Any external funding I receive will be subtracted from the current fundraising goal.
[See the attendance cost breakdown here ]
How You Can Help
Every contribution, no matter how small, brings me closer to crossing this final bridge. Even if you can't donate, sharing this campaign with your network is a powerful act of support.
Thank you for believing in me, in this mission, and in the power of education to change lives
Organizer
Dilnaz Zhalmagambetova
Organizer
San Francisco, CA