Omer Yousuf – Helping Others Find Their Space

Sometimes, finding your space can be very hard.

Omer Yousuf was born in Michigan and moved to Fairfax in 2009. Yousuf found it hard to fit in and feel excited by school subjects. He didn’t do very well and hardly applied himself through grade school.

After graduation, Yousuf decided to attend Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA). "NOVA was a fresh start," he said. "I didn’t have the best clarity on the path forward, but knew I wanted to stay in northern Virginia. NOVA opened the door to new opportunities."

At NOVA, Yousuf immersed himself in his studies and fostered new interests. "The professors at NOVA were incredibly motivated and supportive, particularly the faculty in history, literature and communications. Smaller classes meant that my professors got to know me, and they encouraged me to push myself and develop my skills."

With support from a communications professor, Yousuf joined the Speech and Debate Team during his second semester. There, he had the privilege of working alongside student team members with diverse backgrounds and perspectives. He fondly recounted the experience as "transformative," noting that it helped him find mentors, a support system, and confidence.

While pursuing his studies at NOVA, Yousuf was also involved in organizing efforts with local Muslim youth. Through community leaders, he came to understand the importance of fostering collective dialogue and creating space for minority communities. Originally, Yousuf treated this volunteer work as separate from his studies and career aspirations. However, he sought better tools to understand the challenges faced by the group and found inspiration in how his college professors and community organizers embodied "agents of change." Yousuf wanted to understand and sustain minority belonging and immigrant collectives.

It was while he was volunteering that a faith leader recommended the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution at George Mason.

Yousuf knew about the Carter School before he enrolled at NOVA. Learning about social change was appealing. However, he also sought a way to synchronize change at the community level with transformations at the national or global scale. "I felt a serious tension in studies fixated only on the local or the global level; it seemed limiting and forced." Yousuf added, "But after exploring the Carter website and speaking with the advisors there, I discovered the curriculum would allow me to consider conflict across scales. The advisors at the Carter School wanted to work with me and help me craft a curriculum to explore my topics of interest, giving me options to explore my ‘tension’ through my studies."

Although he looked at other universities and disciplines, Yousuf felt that the Carter School and George Mason could best foster his growth. "I witnessed how essential degrees at Mason had been for my mother and sister’s careers, and they were very supportive of my decision."

At the Carter School, Yousuf found what he had been looking for. "The faculty were incredible. Professors from varied disciplinary backgrounds afforded a dynamic way to interpret and understand conflict; faculty encouraged students to bring their thoughts and perspective into the study," he explained. "I could talk to my professors about my classwork and my volunteer work… the frustrations and dynamics I experienced. They helped and backed my desire to understand the structural and systemic issues I witnessed in community work, and helped me turn my concerns into the basis of critical inquiry and an opportunity for deeper study."

Jane Walker, Director of Undergraduate Student Services at the Carter School, described Yousuf as "a standout student who enriched the experience of other students by his presence and engagement in classes. He also contributed greatly to the community that Carter School students built during his tenure at Mason." She wasn’t alone in her opinion. Other professors described him as "a graceful and polished writer with theoretical abilities that have become – as our students would say – awesome," and "a creative thinker with a rare ability to keep historical and sociological realities in focus."

Yousuf’s final project was on the topic of urban peacebuilding – a capstone not only to his studies, but his personal experiences as well. "The capstone allowed me to focus my studies and experiences into one, final project. More importantly, perhaps, it helped me to realize that the questions I had in high school surrounding inclusivity and my identity as a minority were at the heart of key societal questions. And to me, change depended on the sort of analysis my professors fostered."

At the time, Yousuf did not realize how his capstone would shape his future academic career.

During the height of the pandemic, Yousuf graduated in 2020 from the Carter School with a BA in Conflict Resolution and a concentration in Building Peace in Divided Societies. He received the 2020 Outstanding Scholar Award in recognition of his undergraduate accomplishments.

Post graduation, Yousuf held a few positions, including one in which he worked as a Governor’s Fellow in Richmond, and another as a contractor for the State Department doing reasonable accommodation work for U.S. diplomats.

Then, Yousuf turned his attention back to academia and applied to graduate school. He was accepted into the Urban Planning Master’s Program at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.

When asked why he chose urban planning, Yousuf responded: "Urban planning is practice at the intersection of space and society."  He added, "My volunteer experience and my undergraduate studies pushed me to critically examine the organization of society, and the role of civil institutions in ensuring a good quality of life for all its members." He paused for a moment and added, "Increasingly, peace and spatial studies are researched concurrently because visions of societal wellbeing require responding to divisions that can be understood as material and relational."

Dr. Alpaslan Özerdem, Dean of the Carter School, was proud of Yousuf's achievements and the path he had chosen. "Omer’s journey captures something very important about what we hope students discover at the Carter School: that the experiences and questions they bring with them can become sources of intellectual curiosity, purpose, and ultimately positive change. What is particularly inspiring about Omer is how he has taken his own search for belonging and inclusion and turned it outward toward thinking about how our communities, institutions, and even the spaces in which we live can help others belong. His journey from NOVA to the Carter School and then to Harvard is a wonderful example of what can happen when education helps someone not simply find their own path, but begin creating pathways for others."

Yousuf graduated from Harvard in 2026 with a master’s degree in urban planning, with a focus on cultural heritage. He is also a research affiliate at the Carter School’s Peace Infrastructure Lab.