Zayed Muhammed Yasin

Home town: Scituate, Massachusetts
Undergraduate education: Harvard College

"What enables good work is the ability to access resources and bring them to bear on problems."

Zayed Yasin spent his summer internship in a location most people would envy: Mayaguana, a small island in the Bahamas. Unfortunately, he was too absorbed in constructing an emergency services site—a project that combined his undergraduate degree in engineering with his interests in medicine—to enjoy the beach. "In six weeks on-site," Zayed says, "I went swimming just three times." But the sacrifice was worthwhile because it offered the kind of hands-on involvement Zayed values. "I want to work with my hands and make a difference for those people who need it," he says. "I've always loved fixing things, putting things together." But he made the transition from engineering to medicine, and eventually to entering the MD/MBA program, to bring another dimension to his career. "I also enjoy working with people," Zayed says. "Drafting and designing wouldn't be satisfying to me."

Looking for an alternative approach to international development
As an undergraduate, Zayed spent a summer in Albania working with refugees from the war in Kosovo. After graduation, he spent a year in Pakistan doing public health research on childhood pneumonia. Both experiences taught him hard lessons about the limits of traditional, grant-based development support. "What enables good work is the ability to access resources and bring them to bear on problems," Zayed says. But there are formidable obstacles in the way. "First, too much of the funding is fad-based and politically driven. Second, there's no feedback from the end-user. In the donor world, what matters is not what the people being served think, but what the donors think."

For Zayed, the joint degree is opportunity to find better alternatives. "The MBA gives me the ability to mobilize and organize resources to address the big health problems among people who need the most help," he says. "If you understand finances and operations, you can find ways to deliver better care, improve quality, and make a profit at the same time."

Finding support at HBS
"Health care is especially complicated," says Zayed. "The MBA's general management focus will help me understand the driving forces in the industry and what can be done about them." The HBS community complements the academics. "I'll meet and learn from people from all walks of life, people passionate about solving problems," he says. Once he graduates and completes his residency, probably in ER, Zayed is interested in organizing a company that can address health care problems head on. As he puts it, "To bring people together on the really challenging health care issues—there's nothing more important or more exciting."