20 Jun 2025

Know Your HBS Staff: Alexandra (Sasha) Watkins

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by Shona Simkin

What does a humble potato in a dark cellar have to do with finding satisfaction in your work? For Sasha Watkins, it’s an important metaphor for change and resilience. We talked with Sasha about her work supporting students, why she decided to work in the mental health field, how she finds balance, that potato metaphor, and more.

What is your role?
I am an associate director on the Support Services team within Student and Academic Services (SAS). As a team, we assist MBA students across academic, personal, and wellness dimensions to help ensure their success and well-being during their time here. We also work with partners and doctoral students. I am a licensed mental health counselor, so part of my responsibility involves seeing students for emotional support. This is different from traditional counseling or therapy; our approach centers on collaborative problem-solving and individualized, non-clinical support for each student's situation and specific needs. We don’t conduct formal diagnoses or assessments, we focus on helping students navigate challenges in ways that feel most practical, relevant, and helpful to them.

Like other members of the team, I also provide academic advising, referring students to tutoring, writing coaching, and other resources as needed. Supporting students is about 50 percent of my work and during busy school times, I see up to 20 students a week for all sorts of issues, ranging from finding tutors to managing a mental health crisis.

In addition to working with students one-on-one, everyone on our team manages different programs or lanes. For me, it was academic support in the past when I oversaw the writing coaching and tutoring programs. Now my focus is culture and community engagement. This past year I oversaw the Ascend Leaders Program, a pilot that supported students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, many of whom were first-generation students. We had a very diverse cohort, and our pilot achieved strong results—we had positive student feedback and their academic performance was also strong. Based on this success, we're excited to continue the program next year.

Another program I oversee is the Peer Navigator Program that focuses on peer support. We recruit peer navigators from our pool of SAS tutors—rising Elective Curriculum (EC) students who did well academically their first year and were nominated by their Required Curriculum (RC) faculty. Our peer navigators not only excel academically, but also have big hearts as they are willing to help others in more way than one. For instance, when I worked with a student whose family member was recently diagnosed with cancer and I connected them to a peer navigator who had faced a similar experience, the student shared that it was incredibly reassuring to realize they weren't alone in balancing academic demands while managing such difficult personal circumstances. Finally, I work very closely with Alicia Thomas, our director for community and culture for MBA and Doctoral, to explore ways we can better support students from different backgrounds.

What does that look like day to day?
My typical workday includes a mix of one-on-one meetings with students, collaborating with colleagues, and planning and implementing programming. For example, with the Ascend Leaders we had programming every two weeks, and I made it a priority to stay engaged with the cohort—I attended all their events as a resource, connected to students outside of formal sessions, and was present as part of their support network.

In addition, as a trained clinician, I also cover the HBS Sexual Assault Hotline. When I am on rotation, I am on-call 24/7. Even if a student calls in the middle of the night, I answer the phone and help them figure out what resources can be of help. There are situations where I might go to the emergency room and stay with the student while they are receiving the care they need.

Finally, I collaborate with colleagues across schools and institutions in several ways. As a team liaison, I meet monthly with my colleagues from 10 other highly selective MBA programs to share insights about emerging issues and learn how different schools address various challenges. I'm also a member of HEART, the Harvard Emotional Aid Response Team, a University-wide initiative focused on training and developing comprehensive guidelines and protocols for student emergencies. We meet regularly to discuss how to best support our students and ensure a coordinated response during critical situations.

How long have you been here, and what was your path to HBS?
I’ve been at HBS for seven years and have almost two decades of mental health experience. Prior to joining HBS, I spent 11 years as a college counselor at a large university, where I handled extensive clinical work and crisis intervention for a population of 40,000 plus students. While that work was deeply satisfying in many ways, I felt ready to expand beyond purely clinical practice. I pursued my doctoral degree in organizational leadership studies, and looked for a position that allowed me to combine direct student support with broader systemic impact. When I saw a job posting for my current role at HBS, it felt like a perfect fit because it offered both the one-on-one work and direct care I valued, along with the strategic, bigger-picture thinking that energized me. That combination was incredibly appealing—and now, having been in the role for this many years, I can say it truly lived up to what I had hoped for.

What is your favorite aspect of your role?
This role feels like the one where I’m using the full range of my skills. The work is always evolving, with new challenges constantly coming up. This can be difficult at times but that’s exactly the environment I thrive in. I feel like I constantly need to be on my toes and don’t have time to get complacent and bored.

I also really appreciate the HBS emphasis on supporting students. Having worked at several higher education institutions, I was struck when I joined HBS by how the commitment to supporting students was expressed not only in words, but in actions and resources. I really appreciate that.

How did you decide to work in mental health?
I have several degrees–my undergraduate degree is in Asian studies with a focus on Chinese literature; my graduate degree is in mental health counseling; and my doctoral is in organizational leadership. Prior to becoming a mental health professional, I lived and worked in Tokyo for some time as a member of an expat community. While there, I started volunteering for Samaritans as a crisis hotline counselor. Seeing how important that support was to our callers sparked my interest in helping others. I decided to become a therapist and applied to several programs to get my training. I really liked my master’s program because it focused on the spiritual aspect of counseling and incorporated mind-body integration and mindfulness into clinical practice. While nowadays these approaches are commonplace, they were quite innovative at the time, which ultimately led me to choose specialization in holistic approaches to mental health counseling. Seeing the profound impact of emotional support on people's lives, which I experienced through first volunteering and later training, really set me on the path toward a career in mental health.

With all the care you give to others, how do you find balance and take care of yourself?
When I think about self-care, I consider physical, emotional, and spiritual components. Physically, I practice judo and make time to go for walks with friends. Emotionally, I prioritize spending time with family. Family is very important to me. I have two children, one is 15 and the other 13, so I dedicate my time outside of work to being with them. This became especially intentional over the past several years, particularly after the COVID period, when we worked long hours, including weekends, under very intense conditions. Coming out of that, I made a firm rule for myself to avoid any professional engagements during the weekends, so that I can spend time with my family.

In the spiritual realm, staying intellectually engaged nourishes my spirit, so I do a lot of professional development work outside of HBS that relates to the mental health field. I am a trained group therapist, and I teach group dynamics at the graduate level at a local university. I also write about leadership identity and the cultural aspects of group dynamics for professional publications. As someone who is considered mid-career in the field, I also mentor younger clinicians in their professional development. Additionally, I serve as a co-president of a professional organization for group therapists, which allows me to help build a sustainable community where clinicians can develop professionally and grow.

What do you like to do in your spare time?
My son just finished his freshman year of high school. He plays varsity/junior varsity basketball, so I love attending his games. My daughter is passionate about art, so we often do art-related activities together. A few years ago, she wanted to learn stone carving, which, quite frankly, I had no interest in, but we went to a one-day workshop, and to my surprise, I really enjoyed it. I continued going, working on the same stone for three years now. Last year she didn’t want to go with me, maybe this year she will! This summer I also plan to have “culture days,” where we go to museums or concerts—something that we normally don’t have time to do as a family during the academic year. Being teenagers, they might not be excited about these cultural outings, so I'm afraid I'll have to drag them along! But every time we do something like that, they end up enjoying it.

I also love gardening. Tending to my flowers in my garden is something that’s entirely mine—no one else shares this interest, but I find it deeply satisfying. Watching flowers bloom is wonderful, though sometimes you plant something that doesn’t grow until the following year. Gardening requires constant attention. When I was younger, I wasn’t good with plants, and I didn’t have patience for them as it’s not immediately gratifying. However, you do see results over time, and I came to appreciate the resilience of plants.

Carl Rogers, a renowned psychotherapist and one of the founders of humanistic psychology and person-centered psychotherapy, talked about resilience using a metaphor of a potato in a cellar with very little light. Rogers observed that despite a harsh environment, the potato will sprout and grow towards even the littlest bit of sunshine. This concept guides both my work with students and gardening, reaffirming my faith that things change despite setbacks and challenges. Even when I don’t see change right away in students I work with or my flowers, I trust there is an inherent desire to grow and improve. This belief in the power of resilience and growth makes both my professional work and personal engagements deeply meaningful and satisfying to me.

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