APF Emerging Leaders Fellowship

The APF Emerging Leaders Fellowship is a six-month mentorship and leadership development program designed to provide select students with individualized guidance from accomplished leaders within the Pakistani American community. Each fellow will be paired one-on-one with an APF Board Member based on their interests, aspirations, and areas of expertise. Together, the fellow and mentor will identify and develop a passion project, giving students the opportunity to turn an idea they care about into a tangible initiative or final product over the course of the fellowship.

Beyond the project itself, the fellowship will provide students with meaningful mentorship, professional networking, leadership development, and exposure to accomplished professionals across APF's national network. Fellows will gain experience taking a project from concept to execution while developing skills in communication, research, collaboration, and project management. At the conclusion of the six months, participants will have a substantive project they can showcase in college applications, scholarships, internships, and interviews, as well as a lasting mentorship relationship and stronger connection to the Pakistani American professional community.

“I chose Zehn because I was tired of watching Pakistani literature get flattened into nostalgia or reduced to aesthetics without thinking. Growing up, stories and poetry were not passive in my life. They were how people argued, remembered, and made sense of loss and power. Somewhere along the way, that tradition started disappearing from spaces young Pakistanis actually occupy. Reading became rare. Analysis became optional. Language stopped being treated as something alive.

Zehn is my push against that. I wanted to build a space where Pakistani writing is allowed to be difficult, political, introspective, and unfinished. A space where thinking comes before branding. I did not want to wait for permission or an institution to host it, so I built it myself. I learned how to design the identity, code the site, structure archives, and publish work in a way that takes contributors seriously. The project exists because I needed a place where our literature is not translated down or diluted for palatability.”

Tehreem Fatima, 2025 Emerging Leaders Fellow

“Working with APF was both grounding and expansive; it allowed me to pair lived understanding with structured, data-driven inquiry. The experience affirmed the power of thoughtful research to not only diagnose gaps in philanthropy but to reimagine it as more inclusive, ethical, and human-centered”

Hamza Zia, 2025 Emerging Leaders Fellow