Q&A with Eman Ghandour, 2025 20Twenties Young Alumni Award winner
Eman’s work sits at the intersection of education, equity, career development and belonging.
Graduating from Otago in 2017 with a BA in Sociology, she has more than a decade of experience working alongside young people and communities. Her work is grounded in understanding people’s lived experiences, stories and the barriers they may have faced in reaching their goals and dreams.
For the past seven years, Eman has worked at Auckland University of Technology (AUT). She is currently a Future Student Advisor based at AUT South Campus, working with prospective students to navigate their study options and pathways into higher education. As a registered career practitioner, she also provides career counselling, supporting people to connect their interests, strengths and aspirations with education and career pathways.
Her work takes a community-centred approach to recruitment and engagement, particularly with Māori, Pacific, migrant and refugee communities. She has also completed a Graduate Diploma in Career Development.
Eman currently serves on the AUT South Campus Steering Group and has previously been involved with the Sir Robert Jones Refugee Daughters’ Scholarship Board. She was also selected as a Duffy Books in Homes Role Model, where she speaks with young people about the importance of literacy, education and storytelling.
In 2026, Eman was selected as a Mental Health Foundation Hero Story, connected to the theme of belonging. Through this work, she will undertake community outreach and speak about mental health barriers within her own community. She has also been involved in community initiatives encouraging people to participate in voting and have their voices heard.
From this collective journey, Eman founded Khawat – meaning “sisters” in Arabic – a community-led, not-for-profit initiative established in 2023. Khawat was created to support women, particularly those from migrant and refugee backgrounds, through career development, mentoring and holistic support across their life and career journeys.
Q: How did you react when you heard you had received the award, and what does it mean to you?
I called my mum straight away and we both cried on the phone out of excitement!
We migrated to New Zealand because of my dad, who came to Otago on a PhD scholarship.
Since then, five of my six siblings have graduated from Otago, with one going on to complete a postgraduate diploma and another a master’s.
So, for our family, Otago has a really special place in our hearts. It has changed the future of our family and opened up so many opportunities for us and for the generations that come after us.
Receiving this award felt really special because it brought me back to where that journey started for my family.
Q: What path have you followed since graduation?
I’ve worked across the community and youth sector, starting with the Red Cross and Oranga Tamariki, before moving to Auckland.
From there, I moved into the university space, working in student recruitment and engagement, and eventually trained as a career consultant.
Although my roles have changed, the common thread has always been people. I’ve always wanted to understand people, support them and help them see opportunities for themselves.
Now, as a Future Student Advisor and career practitioner at AUT South Campus, I work with prospective students around their study and career options. A big part of that is understanding where someone is coming from, what barriers they may have experienced and what they need to move forward.
Q: What inspires and motivates you to work in the areas you are involved with?
The way my parents raised me has always been to care for others, so this comes quite naturally to me. I feel like it’s a gift to be able to help others, just as people have helped me along the way.
I think what motivates me is understanding people’s lived experiences and the different barriers they may have faced in trying to reach their dreams. Sometimes it’s not that someone lacks ability or ambition – there may just be barriers around them that make the journey harder.
As a Mental Health Foundation Hero Story, I’ll be doing community outreach and talking about mental health barriers within my own community. I’ve also been involved in initiatives encouraging people from my community to participate in voting and to understand their rights and opportunities to have their voices heard.
I think I’m quite a multifaceted person, and that’s something my BA at Otago really taught me. Studying Sociology, Criminology and Gender Studies taught me to look at people and society from different perspectives. It made me curious about people’s stories, their experiences and the systems around them.
It turns out that building community is probably one of my strongest attributes. I actually started Khawat quite accidentally through a WhatsApp group chat. I saw a need, brought a few women together, and it just kept growing.
What started as a simple group chat became a community. For me, that’s the common thread through everything I do – whether it’s education, careers, mental health, voting or Khawat. I want people to feel like they belong, that their experiences matter, and that they have the opportunity to reach their own goals.
Q: What are your plans for the future?
I want to continue studying and hopefully get a scholarship to complete my master’s and eventually a PhD.
I also want to see Khawat grow from a grassroots community organisation into something that can reach women nationwide.
Khawat has grown organically and is currently not funded, so I’d love to formalise the organisation, secure sustainable funding and build the structures needed to grow it across Aotearoa.
One of my ultimate goals is to create an exchange between Jordan and New Zealand through Khawat. I’d love to create opportunities for people to share knowledge, culture and experiences between the two countries.
Q: Tell us about your time at Otago, and how it has influenced you in your career and following your interests?
Otago was such a highlight of my life – the friends I made, the experiences I had and the opportunities I was given. I’m also from Dunedin, so it was really special to attend our local university.
Otago was where I really found myself. I started learning more about myself through what I was studying and the people I met.
Sociology, Criminology and Gender Studies really opened my eyes to the world. I had grown up feeling quite sheltered, and university challenged the way I thought about people, society and the world around me.
My lecturers were amazing and became such great role models for me. Going to university and learning genuinely felt fun. I loved being able to learn about things I had never really thought about before.
I also got to make friends from all around the world, all studying completely different things. Now, as an adult, I get to connect with those friends and hear about where we have all ended up. My friends aren’t just across New Zealand – they’re all around the world.
And the one thing we all have in common is Otago.
I now live in Auckland, and I still find that some of my best networking opportunities end up being with people who also went to Otago. There’s a bond that’s hard to explain.
I love how Otago pushed me out of my comfort zone – not just academically, but socially too. It taught me to look beyond my own experiences, be curious about other people and understand that there are many different ways of seeing the world.
It gave me an education, but it also gave me community, lifelong friendships and the space to figure out who I was. I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for Otago.