At nine years old, I wasn’t dreaming of Harvard or Oxford. I didn’t know those places existed. I was sitting by the window of our home in Albania, listening to the sharp crack of gunfire echoing through the night. While other children played with toys, I was scanning the shadows, trying to recognise the footsteps of the men walking past our street. I had learned to distinguish them by the way they moved in the dark. Was that him? Was it my father? Would he come home tonight?
Every evening, he promised to return by 9. If the clock struck 9:01 and he hadn’t arrived, I would freeze, not from routine, but from fear.
That kind of childhood doesn’t teach you ambition. It teaches you vigilance. Responsibility. Quiet resilience.
Years later, I stood outside Harvard Medical School, not as a visitor, but as the youngest academic invited to design and lead a graduate-level course. I was 24. My mother, Aferdita, stood beside me, her face full of silent pride. That moment remains one of the most defining of my life.
But it was never just about standing at Harvard. It was about who wasn’t standing there with me.
The earliest seed of the Oxford Academy of Excellence was planted during my time at Harvard. Immersed in an environment of intellectual intensity and opportunity, I saw how transformative world-class education could be, not only for those who access it, but for those who are excluded from it. While designing courses at Harvard, I began imagining how such experiences could reach brilliant minds who might never otherwise walk those halls.
Long before the Oxford Academy of Excellence (OAE) was officially registered, I was mentoring graduate students from displaced and underserved backgrounds, guiding them in biomedical science, research writing, and academic confidence. I did this quietly, often pro bono, while continuing my academic work. These students didn’t need charity, they needed someone to believe they belonged.
The Academy grew from that belief, not from business plans or branding, but from something deeper: the conviction that academic excellence should never be reserved for the privileged few. We registered as a for-profit institution not to limit our purpose, but to sustain it. Our model enables us to reinvest in full scholarships, personalised mentorship, and research-led programmes for talented students facing systemic barriers. We have never relied on external funding, just vision, and the courage to act on it.
Over the years, I have had the privilege of working at or contributing to programmes across several of the world’s leading institutions. I designed and taught a graduate-level course at Harvard Medical School, held a role at the University of Oxford, completed a fellowship with NASA, and I currently work part-time at the University of Cambridge. These roles are entirely separate from my work with Oxford Academy of Excellence.
All of our lecturers at OAE have either trained at, worked within, or collaborated with institutions such as Harvard, MIT, Oxford, Cambridge, and NASA. While we are not formally affiliated with these organisations, we carry forward their academic standards, values, and culture of inquiry. We bring the highest calibre of teaching to students who might never otherwise sit in those rooms, to show that excellence belongs to those with talent and drive, not just access.
We’ve mentored students from conflict zones, refugee camps, and low-income communities, many of whom have since published research, gained graduate qualifications, and stepped into scientific, clinical, and academic leadership.
We do not aim to replicate elite institutions. We aim to reimagine what access to them could look like, with rigour, inclusion, and human dignity at the centre.
As I often say: If you cannot go to the world’s most transformative classrooms, we will bring them to you.
We are now preparing to scale, deepening collaborations with leading universities, inviting Nobel Laureates to inspire and advise, and expanding fellowships for displaced and underserved scholars.
At the heart of this journey is my mother. Aferdita always reminded me,
“True success isn’t measured by what you achieve alone, but by how many others you help rise.”
Her wisdom lives on in everything we do at OAE, where mentorship, inclusion, and impact are held in equal esteem with academic excellence, and where every graduate student is seen not only for who they are, but for who they can become.
Because I was once a scared child, waiting in silence, unsure if the world had space for me.
Today, I build that space so that no brilliant mind is left behind.
That is our purpose, and our promise.