Online Master's in Human Resources Management
Sakina Areej
In the annals of human resources management, it would have been a stroke of genius. Only it didn’t happen at an HR department, but at a college dean’s office in Pakistan.
To summarize: It seems there was this freshman who, in her own words, “was always in the Dean’s office crying about something” after she had mistakenly taken the wrong foundational course for her economics major.
Now, disregard, for a moment, the idea that Sakina Areej, with her delightfully upbeat personality, could cry about anything so, well, bureaucratic: She was just highly focused on her education and didn’t want to make the same mistake again.
“So, they knew me,” says Areej, with just a hint of understatement. “They knew that this girl is very interested, and she’s always coming here, and she knows all the courses. So that’s when they discussed this idea with me.”
What if the dean’s office chose someone to mentor freshmen on their course selection and related issues?
“I was like, ‘That’s a great idea—please do it,’” Areej says.
“And they were, like, ‘Would you like to do it?’”
“Initially, my answer was ‘no,’” Areej says, “because I was a nerd, as you might have imagined, and I was, like, ‘No, it’s going to interfere with my studies, so I’m not going to do it.’ But then, obviously, I have a very soft, melty heart, and I said, ‘Yeah. Sure.’”
As it happened, that “soft, melty heart” would serve Areej well in a profession that puts a premium on empathy and kindness. And while she did indeed graduate from Lahore University of Management Sciences in 2021 with a degree in economics, she realized, while mentoring other students, that what she really wanted to do was help people. So, later that year she moved to the Washington Metro area and enrolled in the Master’s in Human Resources Management program at Georgetown.
She finished the program in December 2022, and, when she graduated the next May, was named the program’s Outstanding Student Award Recipient at the School of Continuing Studies’ Tropaia Ceremony.
In November 2022, Areej became Human Resources Coordinator for VW Credit, Inc., the financial services arm of Volkswagen Group of America. As a generalist, she likes that she is learning new things every day but feels that someday she would like to switch to coaching, a calling she discovered as a college sophomore and practiced in her coaching skills class at Georgetown.
Living in Virginia but doing the program both in person and online, Areej “met people from all over the world, which really does change you as a person,” she says. “It helps you understand that people are different, and you’re also different, but that’s okay. You need to work out those differences and work together as a team to succeed.”