The class got cut a little short — per the order of the U.S. State Department — but not before having a transformative impact on Adham Sahloul.
The time: the summer of 2013. The place: Egypt. The course: Youth and Democratization, taught by the UI College of Education’s Linda Herrera in partnership with the American University of Cairo.
Herrera “was a professor who had a great impact on me,” says Sahloul, 2025’s Young Alumni Award recipient. “Her ability to weave scholarship with connection to Egyptian citizens experiencing and shaping the Arab Spring moment — highlighting the human element behind any policy or academic work— was very formative for me.
“There was a military coup that summer, and the State Department and U of I basically told us to end the class and evacuate the country. I’ll still never forget the traffic en route to the airport, as Egyptians feared the worst.”
The Chicago-born son of Syrian immigrants, Sahloul (LAS ’15) went on to serve at the U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) as a special advisor in the Biden-Harris Administration from 2022-25.
A lieutenant in the United States Navy Reserve, he co-founded the nonprofit North Star Policy Initiative and serves as an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a bipartisan D.C. think tank.
His fondest stateside Illini memories involve spirited basketball games. (No, not the ones John Groce coached in).
“I lived in Allen Hall as a freshman, so I was often at the east rec center, but those evening runs at the main rec center were legendary,” he says.
