Maurice Ngwakum Akisa, BA 20, is one of 145 students worldwide to receive this year's prestigious Schwarzman Scholarship.
Born in Cameroon, Ngwakum Akisa spent his youth moving around sub-Saharan Africa. Frequent moves, and a mixed African-international schooling, sparked an interest in global affairs and development.
"I wanted to formally study and engage in global affairs, to see and understand the rapidly evolving world around us," he says.
Global affairs will be the focus of this upcoming, fully funded master's program at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
Building a global community
Community building has always been very important to Ngwakum Akisa. As a Concordia student, he invested a great deal of time in student organizations and community leadership initiatives.
Arriving as an international student in 2016, Ngwakum Akisa was quick to make his mark. An active student member of several departments, he won the Dean of Students Medal and helped establish the Black Student Career Development initiative.
While officially a graduate of the Faculty of Arts and Science as an economics, computer science and business student, much of Ngwakum Akisa's experience in student engagement was also connected to the John Molson School of Business and the Gina Cody School of Engineering and Computer Science.
President of the African Students' Association, he was an academic delegate and a coach for the John Molson Competition Committee, and served as a board director and chairperson for the Commerce and Administration Students' Association. He was also active as a temporary chairperson for the Concordia Student Union council, a member of the John Molson Faculty Council and was a CEOx1Day finalist.
Since graduating, Ngwakum Akisa has been working as a consultant in systems engineering at Deloitte on their broader engineering, data, and AI team.
"We provide professional services to almost every country in the world and virtually every industry," Ngwakum Akisa says.
"My time at the firm really exposed me to the world of digital infrastructure development for public and private Canadian institutions to increase the general public's access to services. Digital infrastructure will also be a big part of my focus while at Tsinghua University."
"You'd be surprised to know the amount of investment that goes into building digital infrastructure. When they build a bridge or fix a road - you can tell, it's annoying, you can see all the construction workers, the orange cones. When people are building software, you kind of take it for granted. Nevertheless, just like physical infrastructure, large scale digital infrastructure projects can take hundreds of people, years to develop, and millions of dollars."
"That's how I explained it to my parents: I work on a construction site for software."
Getting his hands dirty
Scholars admitted to the Schwarzman Program live in Beijing for a year of study and cultural immersion. Students attend lectures and travel the region to develop a deeper understanding of China and its increasing influence on global institutions and global trade.
"It's out of the box, experiential learning - which I love," says Ngwakum Akisa. "As evidenced by my many undergraduate activities, I love to get my hands dirty."
Ngwakum Akisa is eager to understand the Chinese approach to building digital infrastructure - how they leverage AI to accelerate their process, their approach to cyber security and to safeguarding institutional data.
"Change management and technology adoption is also important. No matter how great a technology is, if nobody uses it, it's useless. That will be my focus going into next year: trying to understand digital infrastructure and emerging technologies within the broader context of global affairs. Additionally, I am looking to compare digital Infrastructure development methods that I have observed in Canada to those in China."
Ngwakum Akisa is the second Concordia student to be selected for the Schwarzman Program. He and Aiden Cyr anticipate many more Concordia Schwartzman Scholars, and encourage students to apply.
"It is a very competitive program, but there are two of us now - so if you didn't believe it once, believe it twice!"
Students are encouraged learn more about the Schwarzman Scholarship. The deadline to apply for the next competition is September 12, at 3pm EDT.
Learn more about the scholarships, bursaries and awards available to Concordia students at the Tuition and Financial Aid webpage.
