Ahmad Choudhry
This month's installment of our Community Spotlight series features the youngest member of Beam Center’s Board of Trustees, Ahmad Choudhry. Ahmad is a first-generation college student at Baruch Macaulay Honors College, majoring in Finance and minoring in New York City Studies. Along with being a student at Baruch, Ahmad is working at Rothschild & Co, an investment banking company.
Ahmad has been part of the Beam community for the last five years, beginning when he participated in our Apprenticeship Program in 2017. With the Apprenticeship team, Ahmad and his fellow apprentices prototyped a plus sign shaped structure that would function as a swimming pool but also clean the water. They prototyped the pool using PVC pipes, arduinos, and LEDs; later the prototype was put into the East River where it floated for a brief time.
Speaking about the Apprenticeship Program Ahmad said, “Before I joined Beam, I was at a point in my life where I didn't have much direction and discipline. One thing that Beam made me realize is literally anything is possible as long as you work hard enough, and it instilled in me values of hard work.”
After completing the Apprenticeship program, Ahmad went to teach in schools during the summer time and later joined the Project Leaders program. Through this program, he developed, designed, and taught projects to kids in after-school programs.
Continuing with his experience with Beam, Ahmad said, “Beam has made me believe that working with others, trying to create a collaborative environment, and having a mission at the end of everything you do is very, very important. You could have a lot of impact in the world.”
Later through Juliette Adams, another member of Beam Center’s Board of Trustees, Ahmad was accepted to an internship for Hats and Ladders, as a Data Analyst. There he worked with HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and SQL and also helped with their website management. Ahmad said that the internship with Hats and Ladders was “very impactful.” He continued to say that “working at a startup was very, very great and made me think about business ideas, how businesses work, how they grow, and how to get funding for businesses. And it got me into the world of finance.”
When asked what he believes is the power of Beam, he said, “I think what's special about Beam Center is their ability to have an impact. I feel like there's a lot of nonprofits all over the world that do a lot of good things. But Beam, in my opinion, is an organization that really changes the lives of people. It changes the way you personally think, the way you look at the world, and it opens the doors to so many different opportunities.”
Thank you, Ahmad, for being part of the Beam community!
