Asel Ibadulla

Research Fellow at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, named among China’s Top 10 Social Entrepreneurs after founding the Mind Matters startup

Asel Ibadulla is one of only two international students admitted to Stanford University’s doctoral program in healthcare technology effectiveness modeling. She is the first representative of Kazakhstan to receive the Knight-Hennessy Scholarship, which provides full funding for her education and research, worth the equivalent of 350 million KZT.

“Many people think I simply spent a year preparing and then got admitted. In reality, it was at least 10 years of consistent, purposeful work,” says Asel, who was featured in the ranking.

Asel’s story begins in Shymkent. Her father worked as a crane operator at a metallurgical plant, while her mother was a teacher. Despite their modest professional backgrounds, academic achievement was always highly valued in the family. Until the 7th grade, Asel dreamed of becoming a doctor — a dream largely inspired by conversations with her mother, who had also wanted to pursue a career in medicine when she was young.

A turning point came when Asel was admitted to a Nazarbayev Intellectual School. After the 9th grade, she traveled to Boston with other students to attend two-week courses at universities. It was during this trip that Asel developed a clear goal of studying abroad.

However, her parents were not ready to let their 16-year-old daughter leave the country, so she enrolled at Nazarbayev University, majoring in Biological Sciences. There, she became involved in research and launched her first startup, Mind Matters — a digital assistant designed to help diagnose mental health conditions.

The project earned Asel a place among China’s Top 10 Social Entrepreneurs. However, she later made a conscious decision to put the startup on hold after realizing that she did not yet have sufficient expertise in the field.

Around the same time, Asel realized that clinical medicine was not the path for her. Instead, she decided she wanted to work in medicine as a researcher. She went on to pursue a master’s degree at Yale University, where she studied the health of ethnic minorities, including Kazakhs in re-education camps in China. She also participated in projects led by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Today, Asel works at Harvard in the Health Systems Innovation Lab, focusing on healthcare reforms, including changes to the way medical services are financed and reimbursed.

Alongside her academic work, she is developing Aspire Admissions, a project that helps students from Central Asia gain admission to leading universities around the world.

“Many young people in Kazakhstan don’t get into Harvard or Stanford simply because they don’t believe in themselves. We want to change that,” concludes Asel, who was featured in the ranking.