When Meena Al-Azzawe enrolled at Portland State University in September 2020, the world around her felt unsettled: Portland had experienced a summer of wildfire smoke, political tension was high, and the city seemed caught in a pressure cooker of grief and fury. Against that backdrop, Meena returned to school seeking something future-facing, constructive, and grounding.
“My time at PSU didn’t point me toward a single career track, it taught me how to navigate complexity,” she reflects. “I discovered that my tendency to see patterns, map systems, and build order out of ambiguity wasn’t a quirk; it was a capability. PSU gave me the first environment where that instinct wasn’t just welcomed but stretched.”
Remote classes didn’t diminish the human connection. “Faculty showed up with generosity and rigor. Classmates showed up exhausted, hopeful, sometimes broken open. Nobody pretended. That honesty became the foundation for how we learned from one another.” Meena points to the influence of her professors, particularly Brian McCarthy, whose Change Management course “rewired something fundamental” in her. On the first day, he declared, “You are all leaders.” That principle, proven through reflective assignments, case studies, and system mapping, reshaped how she approaches leadership today.
PSU’s coursework and consulting-style projects equipped Meena with more than knowledge; they gave her frameworks and lenses to understand the work she had been doing instinctively. “Suddenly I wasn’t just doing the work… I could see the work, its architecture, its psychology, its historical lineage,” she says. This clarity transformed her professional path, helping her move from instinct-driven practice to intentional design in enablement, transformation, instructional architecture, and even founding her own press.
The PSU community also played a pivotal role. “Group projects became pockets of stability and invention,” she recalls. The faculty treated leadership and strategy as living practices, and peers showed up ready to think deeply despite personal challenges. By the time she graduated in June 2022, Meena felt a shift that mirrored the world’s reopening, a steadier, more intentional version of herself ready to lead, innovate, and build.
Looking back, Meena’s advice for current PSU students is simple but profound: “Don’t chase the neatest path; chase the truest one. Your edge isn’t your GPA, it’s your curiosity, your willingness to ask better questions, and your ability to learn how you think rather than how someone told you to think. The field you end up thriving in might not exist yet. That’s not a failure of planning, it’s the sign that you’re part of building what comes next.”
For Meena Al-Azzawe, PSU wasn’t just an academic stop, it was a crucible. It held her through literal and figurative fire, nurtured her leadership, and equipped her to step confidently into complexity, curiosity, and creation.
Portland State University Graduate Business Blog 