Each June, Dartmouth Now profiles a number of students who are about to graduate. New stories will be added each day through Thursday.
Gurveen Chadha '13 will be going home to Montreal after graduation and going to work for Montreal-based L'Oréal Canada. But it is not the world of cosmetics that attracts her. Rather, it is a chance to explore the connection between business and social justice and, according to Chadha, L'Oréal sets a high standard for corporate social responsibility.
Chadha expects the L'Oréal job will help guide her choices for future graduate studies, as well as offering some insight into how she might combine social justice ideals with a career in Canada. As a government major, Chadha hopes to work in international development and international relations.
Her Dartmouth years included roles as a Presidential Scholar, an undergraduate adviser, and an academic coach for underprivileged high school students, with much of her off-campus involvement channeled through the William Jewett Tucker Foundation.
"I first started working with Book Buddies, a program that paired Dartmouth students with elementary school students who were having trouble reading," says Chadha. "Generally, the 'buddies' came from low-income families and could not afford outside tutors."
She went on to help create Achievement at Romano Circle (ARC), which sends Dartmouth students to an area public housing development every weekday to provide assistance with the development's afterschool program.
A major component of Chadha’s undergraduate career has been international exposure. In addition to studying abroad twice, in Oxford and Barcelona, Chadha was awarded the Stefansson Fellowship by the Institute for Arctic Studies, a unit of the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding. The fellowship enabled her to intern in the Canadian Arctic, where she worked for a local homeless shelter. She conducted a community analysis and familiarized herself with the local issues and resources. "This helped me develop a strategy to overhaul the shelter and prevent it from being shut down," she says.
Another international internship grant from the Dickey Center led her to conduct research in rural Uganda. "My research focused on access to financial services and, hopefully, my work will contribute to increasing the financial stability of families in rural Africa," Chadha says.
She credits these experiences with giving her more direction for her post-Dartmouth life. "I got to put my economics and government skills to use, and I gained greater cross-cultural understanding,” she says.
"It is undeniable that I have undergone tremendous growth during my time at Dartmouth, where my classes and interactions with professors helped hone my intellectual curiosity," says Chadha. "I would be a very different person, on a different life path, if I had not come to Dartmouth."
Read additional profiles of members of the Class of 2013:
Give a Rouse: Meet Erin Klein, Dartmouth Class of 2013
Give a Rouse: Meet Mahmud Johnson, Dartmouth Class of 2013
Give a Rouse: Meet Greg Buzzard, Dartmouth Class of 2013
Give a Rouse: Meet Marina Villeneuve, Dartmouth Class of 2013
Give a Rouse: Meet Jacob Hickson, Dartmouth Class of 2013
Give a Rouse: Meet Rachel Abendroth, Dartmouth Class of 2013
