For Nazira Davroni ’25, public service is personal.
While attending high school in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, in Central Asia, Davroni experienced a system that she believed did not adequately prepare students for a fulfilling future. One year, for example, she and her fellow 10th graders couldn’t take math class because the school simply didn’t have a qualified math teacher. Nevertheless, the education and human rights studies major, who was homeschooled from second to eighth grade in the U.S., understood how crucial and transformative education is, especially for girls and women in her culture.
“In my culture, girls are prepared for wifehood from youth, limiting their access to education, career opportunities, and decision-making power,” said Davroni. “Witnessing my childhood friends married off at [age] 16 reinforced for me the negative effects of this cycle on girls’ potential and how it can perpetuate dependency within communities. Pursuing higher education was crucial for me as the first girl in my family to break free from traditional gender roles and gain independence.”
Davroni formulated a plan to help reform global public education and expand opportunities for girls and women in Central Asia.
It was this commitment and her stated intention that afforded her the opportunity to join a unique group of 100 college students from across the nation as a member of the next cohort of Voyager scholars.
“I want to focus on girls’ education challenges in different sociocultural contexts,” explained Davroni. “By examining the barriers girls face in accessing education and identifying effective strategies to overcome them, I will aid in global gender equality and empowerment.”
The Voyager Scholarship — also called the Obama-Chesky Scholarship for Public Service — was founded by former First Couple Barack and Michelle Obama and Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb. The two-year scholarship provides a total of $50,000, plus a $10,000 summer travel stipend, to alleviate student loan debt and support horizon-expanding travel.
“If we want this next generation of leaders to be able to do what they need to do, they have to meet each other, know each other, and understand each other’s communities,” said President Obama when the program launched last year.
For Davroni, who is a first-generation college student and the first woman in her extended family to attend college, the scholarship is an exciting affirmation of her vision. She wants to use the Voyager funds to travel throughout Central Asia during the summer of 2024 to work cooperatively with a nongovernmental organization (NGO) and to begin developing a clearer path for the program she wants to create.
“I plan to visit the American Councils for International Education headquarters in Central Asia to witness NGO-state cooperation and public service,” said Davroni. “I will investigate how cultural norms impact girls’ access to education, how we can encourage girls to pursue STEM fields, and how education policies affect girls’ access to quality education.”
An innate problem solver, Davroni is inspired and committed to making her Voyager prize count, and she’s already gotten a head start on her goals. In high school, she won the Milton Fischer Scholarship for Innovation and Creativity for creating an app to help first-generation students navigate the college application process.
And at Barnard, she was an inaugural Intrapreneurial Leadership Fellow, which gives service-minded students the opportunity to develop the skills, confidence, and relationships needed to affect change in their postgraduate lives, as well as a scholar in the Laidlaw Scholars Leadership & Research Program, which is focused on developing a new generation of leaders committed to evidence-based truths and ethical leadership.
The Obama-Chesky prize and her history strongly suggest that Davroni is destined to make it happen.