Sabah Sial poses for a photo on the University of Utah campus. (University of Utah Communication and Marketing)
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SALT LAKE CITY – Sabah Sial, a senior finance major, is one of 32 National Rhodes Fellows named earlier this month and the University of Utah’s first Rhodes Fellow in 20 years.
“I keep coming back to that moment because I still can’t believe it would even happen,” Sial said, reflecting on the moment she learned she was named a Rhodes Scholar after an agonizing twenty-third – half an hour of waiting during a Zoom call while the members of the selection committee discussed.
Sial of Sandy was selected this year from 2,300 US applicants for the prestigious scholarship, which provides tuition and living expenses for a two-year international graduate program at Oxford University. Sial plans to explore the interface between finance, criminology, and criminal justice over the next year.
“You’d have thought my zoom screen was just frozen – I just smiled and didn’t move at all,” said Sial.
Sial said the idea of applying for the scholarship arose out of conversations she had with Honors College Dean Sylvia Torti, as well as her professor L. Jackson Newell, while serving as her teacher’s assistant during her sophomore year .
“You put me in touch with some of our consultants in the US and a former Rhodes Fellow completely out of my reach,” said Sial. “It made it seem a lot more realistic.”
Born in Pakistan and raised in Utah, Sial devoted her undergraduate studies to economic policy and white-collar crime – and their special effects on disadvantaged and underrepresented populations. For the past two summers, Sial did an internship in the Law Enforcement Division of Goldman Sachs’ Salt Lake City office, an experience “critical” to her desire to promote accountability and access to finance.
“I have a financial background, but most of the people in the compliance function of these banks have a legal background. I have seen how markets affect money laundering and can sometimes make it easier for individuals to launder.” To make money or to engage in illegal activities or to cover it up with the flow of money, “Sial said.
Sial also said she wanted to make finance easier for individuals regardless of their socio-economic or racial background.
“I think finances themselves seem a little inaccessible, both in terms of who has access to finance and in terms of legislation related to financial and economic policy has access to the tables,” added Sial. “Improving this specific process of access to credit and making it easier for individuals of different backgrounds and socio-economic backgrounds to access funding needs will indeed have long-term implications for their growth potential in terms of their economic growth and production. “
Qualifications required for a Rhodes Scholarship include academic excellence, social impact, the ability to work with others, commitment to making a positive difference in the world, awareness of inequalities, and concern for the safety of others. The public service is an important part of the application process.
While at the University of Utah, Sial has worked to diversify the Honors College curriculum, worked to give students a voice in the main security office through the SafeU Ambassador Program, and volunteered in the U.S. Vice Presidential Debate 2020. Sial is a Presidential Intern, Chief Justice of the ASUU Supreme Court, and an Eccles Fellow of Honors College.
“Your work ensures that students have the opportunity to be heard and help shape security policy on campus,” said Ginger Smoak, director of the Office of Nationally Competitive Scholarships. “She is a visionary who uses her extraordinary intellectual abilities and talents, is able to see the big picture and involve many different voices.
“The Rhodes Scholarship will give her the opportunity to further improve these skills over the next two years. I am confident that she will make a great contribution to the future of the world.”
While the Rhodes Scholarship nomination is undoubtedly an impressive individual achievement, Sial does not want to underestimate the importance of having a supportive community at the university that helped her with this achievement.
“I just want to highlight the role everyone else has played in getting me where I am, in relation to my professors who encouraged me to apply, and in particular the University of Utah who is so supportive of me has to connect with people and just make it look a lot more realistic to me – without that kind of support I definitely wouldn’t even have applied, “said Sial.
Sial will receive two Masters degrees at Oxford – one in Criminology and Criminal Justice, the other in Financial Economics.
“(Looking forward to) definitely the most of the people I will meet and also the wider Oxford community in terms of professors and research opportunities, and just being in the UK is a super cool opportunity,” added Sial . “I am grateful that I can not only be a witness (research), but actually be part of this research and this new knowledge.”
There have been a total of 23 Rhodes Fellows in the United States since 1904, the last in 2002. Sial is one of 22 Rhodes Fellows from US universities that year. Women have only been allowed to apply since 1976. In its nearly 120-year history, 3,578 Americans have won Rhodes Scholarships – 627 of them women. In 2021, over 100 Rhodes scholars will be selected worldwide.
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