Stanford Business

MAY 2006


Alums Respond to Pakistani Earthquake

“With the effect of the winter still unclear, I shiver to think of the future of these people,” Khaleeq Kayani, SEP 2001, emailed from Karachi in January. When the October 8, 2005, Pakistan earthquake shattered the mountainous northern part of that country and left an estimated 3 million people homeless, Pakistani and Pakistani American alumni and their families on both sides of the world did what they could to help.

Kayani sent his household staff back to their villages with supplies and money to rebuild their homes. The son of Ahmed Moinuddin, MBA ’84, also of Karachi, helped the Pakistan government develop database systems to track relief goods and the helicopters and heavy equipment needed to deploy them. From Boston, Hasan Usmani, MBA ’86, wrote that his wife, a physician, and his son had volunteered at hospitals in the earthquake zone.

Back from Pakistan, Dr. Naheed Usmani called for American assistance in an op-ed piece in the Boston Globe. “I have been deeply touched by the generosity of so many but am also left feeling that my fellow Americans do not yet comprehend the extent of this tragedy,” she wrote, noting that that media coverage regularly mentioned that Osama bin Laden might be hiding in the region. “Earthquake victims have somehow been tainted with this inappropriate and tangential association,” she wrote. “We must not be robbed of our humanity by inserting politics here.”