In this episode of Highway to Higher Ed, Alex talks to Hamzah Henshaw of Five Before College. Born and raised in Boston, he accepted Islam in 1994 while attending St. Mark’s, a suburban boarding school in Southborough, MA. He graduated from Harvard College, where he

concentrated in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations with a minor in economics. He began his career in the field of Islamic Finance, working for Rockefeller in New York and Saudi Arabia. Hamza transitioned to the field of education and got various opportunities to teach at the top institutes around the world. He has been Dean of students at Al-Noor Academy overseeing the dual enrollment program, and serving as the college/guidance counselor for the high school. During COVID, when everything shutdown and whole the world turned to online, he began to share his experiences online and helped thousands of students in various parts of the world with diverse backgrounds. That became a stepping stone for his current initiative: Five Before College. Alex and Hamzah discuss; Hamzah’s background and path into teaching, how he transition into college counselling, methodology in his consulting, helping Islamic students pursue higher education while remaining true to their faith, his impressions of the landscape evolution in the current age and finally shares a story of a students college essay which got him a call from the President of Mexico.