Peter Biar Ajak, ’07, is fulfilling his purpose: Once the war-torn country of South Sudan attains peace, he wants to guide the government toward sustained prosperity.

You would be hard pressed to find another person better suited to take on such a monumental task.

South Sudan gained its independence from Sudan in 2011, but the fledgling African nation of approximately 11 million people plunged into civil war in December 2013.

“It’s largely a breakdown of institutions of authority,” explained Ajak. “We have a country that’s very poor and very divided.”

However, seeing near-term peace as inevitable, he diligently works to right the country’s fragile economic state. He has developed a plan for the ruling party and government to grow and transform the economy, using South Sudan’s natural oil resource as a way to generate activity. Ajak is also helping the nation’s Central Bank to unify the black market and official exchange rates and to ensure the government can better forecast and manage economic data in a sensible manner.

While Ajak acknowledges his varied endeavors could have a huge impact on the short- and long-term future of the young nation, he remains humble of his accomplishments.

“Life is a gift, but I also believe that there’s a duty to it,” he said. “To have access to so much opportunity means you have to be responsible for other things. For me, it’s really exciting. It’s what I wanted to do since a very young age.”

Struggle and hardship dominated Ajak’s early life. He was a “Lost Boy of Sudan,” a casualty of the civil war that raged for decades there. Along with thousands of other children, he was forced from his home and for years, wandered hundreds of miles from refugee camp to camp—death and disease all around him.

Fortunately, Ajak eventually reunited with his family and came to Philadelphia in 2001 as an unaccompanied minor. Along with other refugees, he went through a month of inductions, learning basic English and how to navigate the city. Ajak soon took an exam that placed him in the 11th grade, and later he entered La Salle University through the Academic Discovery Program, which provides support services for students who could benefit from extra academic assistance.

Ajak exceled at La Salle and became involved in the University’s newspaper and political and economic associations. He said the Catholic values and virtues learned here cemented his sense of purpose that he gained from his Lost Boy experience.

“It made it something concrete that I could feel, something that I could connect to every single day,” said Ajak, who went on to earn his master’s degree in public administration/international development from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

He currently attends the University of Cambridge in England, working toward a Ph.D. in politics with a focus on power and authority, but his heart never strays far from home, which he visits monthly.

“Being a Lost Boy taught me how cruel and tough life could be. However, at the same time, it taught me what a difference the individual could make in the larger scheme,” he said. “These things should never happen again—and I can contribute to that.”