Alumni Spotlight: Akeel Qureshi

For Akeel Qureshi, the PS major gave him the skills in research, presenting, and imagining alternative solutions that have taken him from Berkeley, Beijing and London in tech-sector jobs. Now Director of Business Development for the startup PingSign.com in London, he came to UO from California due to “the relaxed nature of the students, the vibe on campus, and the political undertones (contrarian or not),” and soon was “completely hooked” on political science.

He has since followed his political-science interests to places like Cambodia, Northern Pakistan, Egypt shortly after the revolution, and West Africa during the ebola crisis. “These are all more than just risks,” he writes; “These are calculated moves, and that calculation is due in no small part to the training I received in the Political Science Department at UO.” In all these places he felt that what he learned in political science at UO gave him a “richer, deeper, more powerful experience,” showing “how valuable my PoliSci Education has been for me not only in an overall sense, but in very specific ways as well.”