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Meet Abraham, current MPA Public Management and Leadership student. Find out more about his journey to UCL, his experience of applying to the scholarship and the opportunity it has given him.
Tell us a bit about yourself
My name is Abraham, and I am a studying an MPA in Public Management and Leadership. I won the Pentland Scholarship for 2023/2024 Academic year. Throughout my 11-year career in IT I have had the privilege of serving numerous organizations across the government, private sector, and international organizations. Additionally, I have actively volunteered to drive digital transformation within the public sector in Africa. It was during this that I came across an opportunity to pursue a management and policy programme, which aligns perfectly with my career goals. However, due to my role as the primary provider for my family, financial constraints prevented me from pursuing this opportunity independently. Receiving this scholarship has had a profound impact on my career aspirations.
Tell us about your experience of applying for the Pentland Scholarship
I became aware of this scholarship opportunity through a series of events. I stumbled upon a post in a social media youth group in Ghana, the post highlighted the UCL Pentland scholarship. Coincidentally, two weeks later my HR Director, also brought my attention the various UCL scholarships that were available and open for applications. Intrigued by these recommendations, I thoroughly researched UCL and discovered its reputation as one of the finest educational institutions in London.
What attracted you to UCL?
After receicing the scholarship and as part of the requirement and my career aspirations, I was looking into policy and management with governance exposure to advance in my career. After looking into the department and its skilled professors and faculty staff, it made me want to choose the department and be part of a global university event more.
What do you like best about your course so far?
One thing I like about my course is that I can bring my core I.T concepts and policy ideas to map into the current studies and help me understand the management and policy implications related such topics. I am also impressed by the time we spend on the practice sessions to discuss real world problems and how we can solve them.
What is the rest of your cohort like?
My cohort feels like a family as we learn together and we have some fun trips together with amazing moments. We all like to help each other and that is why I love this cohort. Amazing people from India, Hong Kong, Azerbaijan, Kenya, Chile, China, Singapore, Russia, Australia, United States with different professional goals and cultures.
What are your future ambitions?
My goal is to become a global leader in IT policy and digital transformation, making policy recommendations to countries through the United Nations and African Union. My focus is to help policy implantation in Africa while solving various management problems in Information Technology in the world and my master’s degree is a great impact to these aspirations as the modules that I am learning will influence these goals.
If you could implement one for policy in the world today, what would it be?
If I could implement on policy in the world, it will be helping developing countries adapt to climate change through Technology solutions. This is such that these countries have been the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, although they have contributed the least to the problem. The world needs to provide them with financial and technical aids that can help them adapt to the changing climate with new and advanced technologies that can solve such problems.