Tikkun olam is a Jewish concept that roughly translates to ‘repairing the world’; the belief that in addition to taking care of ourselves and those close to us, we all have a responsibility to try to heal our broken world in whatever ways we can.

Some of the work I’m most proud of has been entirely outside of my professional life. When Afghanistan fell to the Taliban in 2021, I helped organize evacuation flights for Afghan refugees, eventually co-leading the Mazar e Sharif Operations Coordination Cell to help other evacuation efforts succeed. I’m also a signer of the Xinjiang Initiative, a pledge by academics and researchers to do what we can to spotlight the ongoing oppression of Uyghur Muslims in China.