Mouluddin Rahimi '10

Business Administration | Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan

In terms of real-life experience, Mouluddin Rahimi ’10 already had much more of it than most first-year students—or even most adults—when he arrived at Susquehanna. Fluent in six languages, the northern Afghanistan native had served as a translator for the U.S. Army, then had fled to Pakistan after the Taliban threatened his family—all by the time he was 18.

Nonetheless, he says, “Susquehanna has changed my life.”

The first day he arrived he thought, “This is a beautiful home.” Since then, he’s found Susquehanna extremely friendly and accepting:  “I have a lot of friends, it’s a family.”

Mouluddin has worked as a resident advisor and admissions student assistant. He’s also a member of the Asian Student Coalition, a Presidential Fellow and was one of the re-founding brothers of the service fraternity Phi Mu Delta. As an Honors Program member, he is engrossed in his academic studies at the highest level. “When I was dreaming in Afghanistan, I was hoping for the best education, and now I am getting that,” he says.

He says one of the benefits of a Susquehanna education is the close relationships students can forge with faculty. Advice, he says, is always available. “It’s not just education; it’s faculty/student relationships,” he says. “They really help you, they find you contacts.” One such contact helped Mouluddin land a summer internship with a New Jersey financial planning firm run by a Susquehanna alumnus.

To further enhance his global perspective, the spring semester of his junior year Mouluddin will attend the business school’s London program. He also has traveled to New Orleans as part of a student Hurricane Relief Team.

“It was a life-changing experience,” he says of his service trip the Gulf Coast. “You go there with a group and make a difference” —which is what he has in mind for his homeland. While his near-term plans are to take the Chartered Financial Analyst exams and work in New York City, Mouluddin says, “Eventually I will go back and help Afghanistan. I would love to stay here for a while, but Afghanistan is waiting for me and the world to help it.”