Shabana Basij-Rasikh

Shabana Basij-Rasikh is the President of the School of Leadership, Afghanistan (SOLA). It was in 2008, as a student at Middlebury, that Basij-Rasikh co-founded SOLA with the mission of providing access to quality education for girls across her homeland. SOLA remained a priority throughout her college years and became her lifelong commitment upon graduating Middlebury magna cum laude in 2011 with a degree in International Studies and Women & Gender Studies. Basij-Rasikh has since earned a Master in Public Policy from Oxford University and has received honorary doctorates from SOAS University of London (2016), Cedar Crest College (2019), the University of Scranton (2024), and Roger Williams University (2024).

At Middlebury, Basij-Rasikh was awarded a Davis Peace Prize with which she built wells outside of Kabul; was selected as one of Glamour Magazine's Top 10 College Women of 2010; and received the Vermont Campus Compact 2011 Madeline Kunin Public Service Award for leadership and service to others.

In 2014, Basij-Rasikh was named one of CNN International's Leading Women and one of National Geographic's Emerging Explorers. She is a global ambassador for Girl Rising, a call to action seeking investment in girls' education worldwide.

In 2018, Basij-Rasikh was awarded the Malalai Medal, one of Afghanistan's highest national honors, for her work in promoting girls' access to education. In 2019, she was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list in the social entrepreneurship sector; in 2021, The Washington Post named her a contributor to their Global Opinions section; and in 2023, she received the Rolex National Geographic Explorer of the Year award from the National Geographic Society.

In August 2021, days after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, Basij-Rasikh led the evacuation of the SOLA community from Afghanistan to Rwanda. This is where SOLA has re-established its operations and now exists as the only boarding school for Afghan girls operating on Earth. Under the Taliban’s rule, Afghanistan in 2024 has once again become as it was during Basij-Rasikh’s youth, with women’s rights profoundly restricted and girls forbidden from completing their educations. Basij-Rasikh’s commitment is to the girls of Afghanistan, girls still in their homeland and girls scattered in the worldwide diaspora, and she is driven to make SOLA a place of hope and promise — a place where Afghan girls will always be free to learn.