An entrepreneur from Swansea has turn into the primary individual from Wales to be awarded the distinguished Knight-Hennessy scholarship since its institution in 2016.
As one among solely 70 scholarship recipients chosen from over 8,000 candidates from around the globe, Liam Rahman, 29, will pursue an MBA and MA in Training at Stanford College, California, USA, from this September.
The Knight-Hennessy Students (KHS) programme is the biggest totally endowed graduate-level scholarship on the earth, value over $350,000 per recipient and protecting the total price for Liam to finish each graduate levels and take part within the KHS management programme at Stanford, which is designed to develop the talents of the world’s future leaders.
After finishing the programme, Liam hopes to convey again the talents he has developed to help the following era of younger individuals in Wales to purpose excessive academically, together with these on the Welsh Authorities’s Seren programme – an initiative which Liam works with, aimed toward supporting the nation’s brightest learners to realize their full tutorial potential and go on to main universities in Wales, the UK, and abroad.
To be shortlisted for the KHS scholarship, Liam first utilized efficiently to the world’s most selective MBA programme on the Stanford Graduate College of Enterprise (GSB), earlier than being assessed on his tutorial {and professional} successes in addition to by means of numerous essays, displays, interviews and group discussions noticed by three present students. Students are additionally chosen for his or her civic mindedness, independence of thought and purposeful management – three attributes seen by the admissions workforce as crucial to the success of future world leaders.
Liam stated:
“I couldn’t consider it after I bought the decision to say that I had been accepted onto the KHS programme. It was such a surreal expertise receiving the information with a name from John Hennessy – the previous President of Stanford College and present Chairman of Alphabet Inc., Google’s father or mother firm – whereas I used to be strolling my canine on the seaside in Swansea!”
Liam has a formidable CV, having kickstarted his entrepreneurial journey aged simply 17, when he co-founded Equal Training Companions – an training recruitment providers firm – together with his mom.
After organising the corporate, he went on to finish an undergraduate diploma in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) at Yale-NUS (Singapore) and Yale College (USA) and labored within the monetary providers business at BW Group and Goldman Sachs. He then returned to Wales in 2017 because the full-time managing director of Equal Training Companions, which has since grown five-fold, now using over 130 individuals throughout Wales.
Liam is enthusiastic about serving to Welsh learners entry the very best larger training alternatives and works intently with the Seren programme, which helps yr 8-13 learners from state faculties and additional training faculties throughout Wales to use to prime universities by offering them with super-curricular tutorial experiences and software help, data and recommendation.
As a part of his work with Seren, Liam has performed a key function in constructing worldwide training partnerships with main US universities together with MIT and Yale. This has included organising co-funded scholarships with the Yale Younger International Students summer season programme, enabling 116 Welsh learners to achieve locations on the scheme between 2018 and 2021. Equally, in 2018 he established the MIT International Educating Labs in Wales programme which brings STEM consultants from MIT into school rooms and employees rooms in faculties and faculties throughout Wales, which is able to now run till 2026.
His work has additionally seen him collaborate with main universities together with the College of Oxford to arrange a web based summer season faculty for Seren learners, which sees them attend lectures led by prime teachers from around the globe, to provide them an perception into larger training, develop their expertise and strengthen their functions. He’s additionally a volunteer alumni interviewer for Yale College and an exterior software reader for the US-UK Fulbright Fee – an organisation supporting extra younger individuals to review within the USA.
Going ahead, Liam goals to proceed engaged on challenges going through the training sector, comparable to expertise attraction and growth, and hopes to forge additional world partnerships and connections to boost Wales’ training system. He plans to do that by engaged on widening larger training entry with Seren, bettering STEM training, growing worldwide mobility of Welsh learners and educators, and exploring edtech options within the coronary heart of Silicon Valley.
As somebody who’s homosexual, epileptic and from a multiethnic background, Liam can also be eager to work on initiatives to make school rooms extra inclusive together with these from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds, LGBTQ+, bodily impaired and neurodivergent learners. As a Welsh speaker, he’s additionally eager to help initiatives to assist promote the language and as a part of his evaluation for the Knight Hennessy Scholarship, submitted a video in regards to the Welsh language, its historical past, resurgence and the efforts to develop its use.
Liam added:
“I’m actually enthusiastic about serving to younger individuals in Wales obtain their objectives and firmly consider somebody’s background shouldn’t decide their future or forestall them from attaining huge issues.
“It’s all the time value being formidable, making an attempt your finest and aiming excessive, even for those who don’t suppose it can work out. That’s why I really feel strongly that Seren is so essential and why I’ve been concerned with the programme, each personally and thru Equal Training Companions.”
