Every year on June 17, Zara Ahmed takes a moment to stop and think about a young girl living in a small, rural village in southwest Cameroon. It is something she has done every June 17 since 2008, when she was a WDI summer intern working for a public health nonprofit and helped deliver a baby girl who would take her name. “I think back to that day and wish her a happy birthday,” said Ahmed, now the senior policy advisor for health systems and sustainability in Haiti for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “I wish little Zara a future like my own: full of opportunity, support and love.” Despite Ahmed’s wishes, she realizes it is likely that her namesake may be leading a difficult life. Baby Zara’s mother was 21 when she gave birth to her third daughter to go along with one son. Ahmed helped clean the newborn with palm oil, the only clean liquid available at the minimally equipped, one- nurse clinic. The baby’s mother was so certain she was going to have a boy that she planned to name him after Ahmed’s brother, Zamir. When the baby turned out to be a girl, the father was so unhappy with her gender that he initially ignored her. When he finally visited and begrudgingly gave his approval, Baby Zara’s mother breathed a sigh of relief and felt free to begin to bond with her daughter. “This experience breaks my heart every time I think of it, which is quite often,” Ahmed said. “Baby Zara was born into a family that had few resources to offer her beyond their love. As a female, she was born into a life with few prospects, will likely have little education, will marry early and have to endure risky pregnancies and childbirth of her own. “She will not be afforded the same privileges I have – proper nutrition, years of schooling, advanced healthcare, reproductive choices – unless our world dramatically changes for the better.” Trying to make the world a better, healthier place has been Ahmed’s work since graduating from the University of Michigan in 2009 with dual master’s degrees in public policy and public health. She spent the first several months in Bangladesh as a consultant with the U-M President’s Advisory Committee on Labor Standards and Human Rights, looking at issues of female migrant worker rights and conditions in the factories where U-M-branded goods were produced. While in Bangladesh, Ahmed was selected for a CDC global health fellowship. She took a position on the CDC’s Health Systems Strengthening team in Rwanda in fall 2009, and Zara Ahmed Alumni Features 25th Anniversary 63