A Roundtable of Inspiration: GHELI Welcomes Dr. Suraya Dalil

December 21, 2017
Dr. Suraya Dalil.

The Incubator was honored to welcome Her Excellency Dr. Suraya Dalil on Thursday, December 7, for a conversation with Faculty Director Sue J. Goldie about potential opportunities to collaborate and realize Dr. Dalil’s vision of advancing health and peace for the people of Afghanistan. Dr. Dalil is the Permanent Representative of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to the United Nations in Geneva. She also leads the representation of Afghanistan in the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) Human Rights Council (HRC). A graduate of Kabul Medical University and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Dr. Dalil is the former Minister of Public Health for Afghanistan. This fall, as a Menschel Senior Leadership Fellow at the Chan School, Dr. Dalil also joined Dr. Goldie for a Voices in Leadership interview, “Afghanistan: Reflections on My Journey.”

During her visit to the Incubator, Dr. Dalil met with Dr. Goldie and Dr. Susan Holman, GHELI’s Senior Writer, to reflect on stories that have shaped her journey. They brainstormed approaches for generating creative multimedia and teaching tools grounded in lessons learned from Afghanistan, which in turn could facilitate dialogue, debate, and discourse across the Harvard community. The Incubator recently curated an extensive digital collection of current data resources about Afghanistan, which coincides with publication of the 2017 Afghanistan Journal of Public Health. GHELI has also worked with faculty and visiting residency fellows on videos, art, and print that use personal narrative to think creatively about health challenges and responses. 

Stories told around the table at the Incubator included notes on the Taliban in Afghanistan, the importance of credibility and call in leadership, the power of the university as a moral global voice, a ping-pong game with a fellow student who felt called to leadership but saw clearly the risks, and Dr. Dalil’s own recollection of how intimidating her midcareer studies at Harvard seemed when the student in the next seat was already an expert in subjects she was learning for the first time.  

“Students need reassurance so badly; it makes all the difference,” she said. Yet it was not just her education but also the power of such narrative—specifically, a Harvard news story about her graduation—that led to her appointment as Afghanistan’s Minister of Public Health. She anticipates that Afghanistan’s new work on the Human Rights Council—perhaps with the help of interested Harvard student interns—might continue to inspire others, by creating materials that will eventually be “documents in the history of Afghanistan on human rights.”  

And given time, Dr. Dalil said, she hopes to write the story of her own amazing journey to leadership. Stay tuned!