Maya Ajmera: Moments of Obligation

I work with an incredible team at the Society for Science to ensure that every young person can become a scientist or engineer if that is what they want to become. I work hard to make sure that young people realize their scientific and engineering dreams.

Right now, I’m reading Neel Patel’s Tell me How to Be. Also, I just finished reading a few books — A Burning by Megha Majumdar, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein, The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead and Arc of the Comet by Greg Fields. I tend to read a few books at a time.

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle.

I wanted to be a paediatrician caring for children and young people. I also wanted to be a scientist, doing research on pediatric diseases.

Our mission at the Society for Science is to inform, inspire and educate everyone about the beauty and power of science. We are best known for our award-winning magazine, Science News, our world-class science research competitions and our suite of outreach and equity programs. Our work is dedicated to building a scientifically literate public as well as making sure that every young person in the world can become a scientist or engineer if they so choose.

Oh, the Places You’ll Go by Dr. Seuss. This book is a wonderful celebration of the value that success comes from within, no matter what challenges you face — written in the delightful, lyrical style of Dr. Seuss.

When I founded the Global Fund for Children, there is a book that I received: Common Fire, Leading Lives of Commitment in a Complex World. It is about the drive — the fire in the belly — that pushes individuals, activists, social change leaders and social entrepreneurs to lead a life of commitment to making the world a better place. I have read this book many times during different points in my career. Every time I pick it up, I find a new kernel of wisdom that is very important and useful in my work.

Yes, I associate Atul Gawande’s series of books, including Being Mortal and Complications, with my brother who is an infectious disease doctor.

Books give children the ability to be in somebody else’s shoes and allow them to use their imagination to travel to faraway places. It is a place for them to discover themselves.

I love both. I love biographies and autobiographies, and I love reading fiction books by immigrant writers. I collect books by South Asian writers. On my bookshelf, you will find books by Kiran Desai, Bharati Mukherjee, Jhumpa Lahiri, Pankaj Mishra, Rohinton Mistry, Vikram Chandra, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Manil Suri, Abraham Verghese, Salman Rushdie, Monica Ali, Anita Desai and many more. I have enjoyed reading the autobiographies of Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton, and biographies such as David McCullough’s John Adams and Walter Isaacson’s Einstein. My next book to read is A Promised Land by Barack Obama.

I really liked Becoming by Michelle Obama and Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. So much has happened this past year. The Black Lives Matter movement inspired me to read many more books by Black writers. Colson Whitehead is one of my favorites — particularly his books The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys.

During my undergraduate studies, I had the life-changing opportunity, through a Rotary Graduate Fellowship, to travel to Southeast Asia. One day, on a train platform in Bhubaneswar, an ancient city in India’s eastern state of Odisha, I was struck by a small makeshift school that had been set up to serve the children who lived and worked around the train platform. When I asked the teacher how much it cost to operate the school, I was surprised to learn that the school could pay two teachers to instruct 50 children for only $500 per year. That was the impetus for me to ask myself ‘How do I help?’ and ‘How do I get small amounts of capital into the hands of innovative grassroots organizations like this one?’ With these questions in mind, I founded the Global Fund for Children, with the goal of supporting innovative community-based organizations serving the most vulnerable young people around the world.

My freshman year English class at Bryn Mawr College — Perspectives on Growing Up Female — gave me the opportunity to read many exceptional books. Some of my favorite titles included The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, Bronx Primitive by Kate Simon, Memories of a Catholic Girlhood by Mary McCarthy, The Color Purple by Alice Walker and Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi. As a South Asian American girl brought up in eastern North Carolina, these books played a strong role in giving me an identity, voice and agency. It is these very books, from my freshman year at Bryn Mawr, that remain on my bookshelf today.

I was thrilled to read Things We Lost to the Water by my friend Eric Nguyen. I am very intrigued to read more books by writers of the Vietnamese diaspora such as Monkey Bridge by Lan Cao, The Book of Salt by Monique Truong and The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen.

Moments of Obligation.