Dreaming Without Measurement: How Exercising Leadership Became a Turning Point for Mahikan Rind

Crafting a Voice While Dreaming Bigger

An accomplished writer, Mahikan has already published three books, with a fourth on the way, along with numerous articles and blog posts. Still, the idea of studying at Harvard felt impossibly distant. “Even with words on my side and my passion to accompany me,” she says, “Harvard felt like a faraway dream. It was as though to dream of studying was to dream and dream it alone!”

Finding a Framework for Her Aspirations

That dream took a new shape when she discovered Harvard Online’s course Exercising Leadership. The course, taught by Professor Ronald Heifetz, explores how leadership can be practiced without formal authority—something that spoke directly to her experience.

“Exercising Leadership called to me,” Mahikan explains, “because I wanted to learn how belief can become the reality which you may someday live, how dreams can be shaped into something living, breathing, and useful in the world.”

Earning her certificate in the course marked more than a line on her résumé. It marked a deep internal shift.

As she grew older, Mahikan had already begun to see some of her dreams come true through her books, her writing, and her growing voice. “As I grew up and slowly kept fulfilling my dreams, my confidence boosted,” she says. But joining Harvard Online through the Exercising Leadership course changed the scale and meaning of that growth. “It was entering into the Harvard Online community when I realized that my growth was no longer mine alone.”

Under Professor Heifetz’s guidance, her understanding of leadership expanded beyond individual achievement. “My understanding of leadership deepened, but more importantly, my sense of purpose widened,” she recalls. “This new perspective gave my pen an irremovable ink.”

When One Story Sparks Many

That “irremovable ink” became real the moment other young girls began to reach out to her. They wanted to know how she, a girl from Turbat, had found her way to Harvard Online.

“I knew I had now to lead them with the same strategy I took [to enrolling in Exercising Leadership] but keeping in mind the different paths they were going to take, but with the same energy. That was the moment belief moved from my mind into my bones and from my bones to my pen.”

Practicing Influence in Everyday Life

For Mahikan, leadership at home has never been about titles or positions. “In my community, authority is not announced, one must portray it for others to recognise,” she explains. Exercising Leadership helped her see that this lived reality aligned with an important principle: leadership does not require formal authority.

“Exercising Leadership taught me that leadership does not require a title, only courage, patience, and care,” she says. With “natural empathy and nurtured morals” shaped by her parents and community, she began to lean even more intentionally into listening and support. “I learned to listen before speaking, to lead with empathy, and to invite others forward instead of standing alone at the front.”

Her definition of success also began to change. “Now, I do not measure success only by my own publications,” she says. “I measure it by the number of voices I help raise, people I influence, youth I guide and readers alike myself I push. I guide, encourage, and stand beside young people, especially girls who are waiting, often unknowingly, for permission to begin.”

The distance between Turbat and Harvard is not just geographic; it is also shaped by access, expectation, and belief. “In Balochistan, education is often attained after a long, long road of many struggles,” Mahikan explains. “Many learners are still reaching for the basics, while global opportunities feel like myths or dreams too big to fulfil. For a girl from Turbat to study at Harvard Online can sound almost unreal. To have such an easy access to such a giant brand of education in the world is everything to a passionate learner.”

Turning Doubt into Recognition

That sense of disbelief became painfully clear when she first shared her certificate online. “One wonderful incident that I shall carry with me would be, when I shared my certificate online, some dismissed it as fake, something anyone could design while other word of mouth justified to shame in other ways.”

The skepticism hurt, but it also revealed something deeper about how distant such opportunities still feel for many in her community. “That doubt stung, but it revealed a deeper truth: such opportunities are still unfamiliar to us,” she says.

Now, as her story begins to be shared more widely, that disbelief is beginning to shift. “Now, as Harvard Online prepares to share my story, disbelief begins to soften and unleash themselves,” she reflects. “What was doubted becomes possible now. And in that transformation, a quiet hope is born, for me, and for many others watching and the rest, reading this.”

An Invitation to Dream Beyond Limits

For young people from remote communities who wonder whether opportunities like this could ever be “for people like them,” Mahikan has a message forged from her own journey:

“Dream without measurement. Dream so wildly that your hopes become jokes, turned into sarcasm by those who cannot see as far as you do. Because when big dreams finally find their echo, the world listens, it watches and it follows.”

More than anything, she wants them to know that they belong in the very spaces they might currently only dare to imagine. “You belong in every space you dare to imagine yourself in,” she says. “You do not owe the world any permission, you only owe yourself courage.”