By Claire Borncamp and Nina Borncamp
Mar/Apr 2024
For over 100 years, Girl Scouts of the USA has found its way into the lives of young girls. This year, Noorain F. Khan, senior advisor to the president of the Ford Foundation, was elected its president. As its first president from a Muslim and South Asian background, she hopes to serve as a role model and lead the organization to a bright future.
Her journey as a Girl Scout began with her mother, a troop leader in Pakistan. Even though there were not many Muslims in Noorain’s own troop and despite all of her troop leaders/peers being white Americans, she always felt supported. Her troop leaders created a safe space for her to develop varied interests and aspects of her personality, inspiring her to continue Girl Scouts throughout high school. For her “gold award” project, she raised funds for a Muslim youth group that she had founded at her mosque. This experience turned out to be formative to her career track. Khan earned a juris doctor degree from Yale Law School, an MPhil in migration studies from Oxford, and her undergraduate degree from Rice University.
Even as an adult, Khan continued to be involved with Girl Scouts and their causes, leading her to her dream role as its president. In her new capacity, she is seeking to pass on and share her experience and to create safe and inclusive spaces for all young women. She believes that her heritage makes her more understanding, that her culture has better “equipped her to contribute to her country” and that her minority background enables her to be more understanding and see people with economic hardship and language barriers more easily.
In addition to her background, Khan’s work with the Ford Foundation has also influenced her goals. She was a key partner on the foundation’s historic 2020 $1 billion social bond offering that drove major investments in organizations to combat the crises of COVID-19 and systemic racism. She also launched and oversaw Ford’s work in disability rights, growing it into the largest private funder of disability in the world. She plans to utilize her work with the foundation and transfer her experience into the Girl Scouts’ value system.
Her main goal as president is to “create a world where all girls have ways to contribute.” By doing this she hopes to make the organization a place that can help girls from any heritage to accomplish great things. Khan wants to inspire others, especially those with a Muslim background, to pursue their dreams and hopes that her election has proved that women of all backgrounds can achieve amazing things.
Read about other Muslim Girl Scouts here.
Claire Borncamp and Nina Borncamp are avid writers in high school. They wrote this article for Islamic Horizons during a workshop with WritersStudio.us.
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