Meseret Alaro (Ph.D) is the Director of Public and International Relations at Kotebe Metropolitan University.  Meseret was born and grew up in Wolayta Sodo in the Southern part of Ethiopia.  As the firstborn, her mother named her Meseret to mean “the foundation” of perhaps the family but Meseret ended up being a strong foundation to her community, especially to her students that she groomed to be true to themselves, to believe in themselves and to have the self-esteem and self-confidence that they never had before. She is a mentor that every young generation must have. Meseret has maintained and lives her name’s meaning and makes everyone around her proud.  She is highly principled, courageous, innovative and with strong discipline and a keen desire for justice.

Meseret’s childhood has been most challenging. Her parents separated when she was seven years old and unlike the tradition of kids remaining with their mother, in her case, the mother was forced to leave the kids behind which left a huge void and psychological impact in the children.  Meseret grew up taking care of the family at a young age and carried all the burden and family responsibilities a mother would have. She took her responsibility seriously but was also determined to complete her education no matter how hard life became to this child. With the support of her father though, Meseret avoided early marriage as that was the norm where she grew up and completed high school. Her father also encouraged and mentored her to be goal oriented and focus on her studies. He brought books and paid for extracurricular activities so she could be exposed to different ideas and become the best she could.  Meseret became so studious and went all the way to complete a Ph.D. program in Applied Linguistics & Communication. She has two master’s degrees in gender and English literature.

Meseret has found her calling in being a voice to the voiceless: listening to their problems and finding solutions especially of young girls and women. “I grew up in a place where poverty is deeply rooted and poor students who join universities are totally ignored. In order to sustain their education, some female students are forced to do a life that is detrimental and threatens their livelihood.  Her mission is to guide them towards the right path rather than judging them. “My contribution to helping the poor university students is my way of dealing with poverty. It always reminds me of my childhood; the challenges I went through…

Her childhood trials and tribulations and surviving the odds she considers as her biggest achievement to date. Other achievements of her live: initiating a mentorship programs throughout her tenures in the institutions she is assigned to teach, helping students with their tuition mostly out of pocket and collaborating with international NGOs to land scholarship opportunities for quite a few students, involving students in social entrepreneurship as a means of legal income generation, publishing several research articles, encouraging and motivating women to aspire for higher positions and winning, working to influencing policies, case in point: working as a gender officer at Gondar University, she helped bring the departments heads to 50% female; sitting on several organizations boards where she could influence and lead; a feminist, a wife and a mother of two.

Her advice to younger generations especially women:

To always be a voice for the voiceless. It requires guts and being down to earth to tackle problems from the grassroots level she says, but we need to find the ultimate cause of the problems and determine to find the solutions; to be truthful in leading our lives and to be exemplary in what we do.

For women in particular she strongly suggests determination and hard work as being key to addressing our challenges. Self-awareness and working on ourselves help us to have internal strength and self-confidence so as to push our agenda forward, she asserts. She also makes strong point in favor of mentorship. “We shouldn’t give up mentorship as a practice to have clear guidance at all levels: peers, family, academics, community service, and in any relations”.

Meseret is exemplary of strong work ethics; blessed with abundance energy, she encourages those close to her to go the extra mile. Her colleagues address her as “iron lady”.  They also say Dr. Meseret has the capacity to make a difference in the nation if she is given the chance to join hands with the circle of likeminded people. Her philosophy of “no justice no peace”, she fought for the right of a female student who was abused by a teacher and pushed the university to take action against the perpetrator otherwise would have gone free because of the hard fight involving in cases such as this. His contract was terminated according to the code of anti-harassment. She believes the only way to teach others is to be.

Her wish to our community is that every one of us could contribute genuinely on the things we do. She wishes to have a society that is living the truth and walking their talk.  If this happens, she says, we could make a difference in our communities to live a better life, to have quality education and better health services. She wants to see a supportive community that rises up to eradicate poverty for a better tomorrow. Hence a nation that lives in dignity and peace.

The AWiB Team

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