From the Mountains of Balochistan to Capitol Hill

Walwala Bashir’s (MIDP-26) interest in development policy started in the place she calls home. 

She grew up in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan — Pakistan’s largest and most resource-rich province, where rugged mountain terrains meet vast deserts. Despite its wealth of resources, it is also the country’s poorest province. The gap between Quetta’s potential and its development challenges was a constant, lived experience for Bashir.

As a woman, she experienced this opportunity gap firsthand — and saw how much deeper it ran for women. Gender shaped everything: who weighed in on local decisions, who went to school, who got a seat at the table at all.

“I was always surrounded by a cultural setup where women were designated or attached to a few roles,” says Bashir. 

Bashir set out to redefine the expectations she grew up with. During her undergraduate years, she launched a campus initiative to bring more women into student governance. Bashir often organized events and invited women professionals to speak, creating spaces where girls from traditional backgrounds could see themselves in roles that had long seemed out of reach. Her message to young women and girls was clear: if she can, so can you.

“The goal was always the same: I wanted more women to be in education, because education for women is not a priority in the region,” she says.

Bashir knew that her student initiatives were only the beginning of the impact she wanted to have in her community. However, jobs were scarce in her small town, and she understood the quiet pressures that accumulate around young women like her. So in her sixth semester, before she had even finished her degree, she applied to the McCourt School and was accepted.

One month after completing her undergraduate degree, she was in the United States to prepare for her first semester at McCourt. Her trip to Washington, DC, was also her first time leaving Pakistan. 

“It was really a very transformative journey,” she says.  “I was doing everything on my own for the first time — navigating the city, finding housing, everything.”

Learning and building in a new city

With a degree from Balochistan University of Information Technology, Engineering and Management Sciences with a degree in international relations, she began her master’s in international development policy. She knew the program’s quantitative focus would be a learning curve.

“I managed to navigate my way through my quantitative studies because of the facilities McCourt provides and all the teaching assistants who helped me understand the courses,” Bashir says.

Arriving in Washington, DC, Bashir found herself drawn to supporting other international students going through similar transitions she experienced. She joined Georgetown’s International Ambassador Program, helping new international students navigate their way academically, socially and culturally.

That first year, she also applied to the McCourt School’s Public Policy Challenge, an annual competition that tasks Georgetown graduate students with developing innovative solutions to issues in the Washington, DC, area. Her team’s proposal centered on creating support systems to help immigrant parents navigate the American education system. They went on to become finalists.

Outside the classroom, her curiosity extended further. As a graduate assistant at the Center for Faith and Justice, she discovered interfaith dialogue as a tool for change — something that came into focus the day she attended a church service for the first time.

“It was a meaningful experience to see how different faiths can stand under the same roof, talk about problems, and pray about those problems together,” she reflects.

As Bashir prepares for graduation, she hopes to continue building her experience in development policy. In addition to her strengthened analysis skills, she hopes to create change through dialogue, a skill she says she improved during her time at McCourt. 

“Policy is for people,” Bashir says. “Unless you talk to people, you can’t understand them. And if you don’t understand them, you cannot come up with a policy that addresses their issues. This is one of the biggest lessons I learned at McCourt.”

Long-term, her sights are set on home. She hopes to return to Balochistan with what she has built at McCourt to develop policies that address the challenges that first sparked her interest in development policy.

“Graduating with this degree is valuable for me because rarely does somebody from the town I’m from get to study internationally,” she highlights. “There’s a responsibility on my shoulders to give back.”