Meet Mariam Hassan, Founder & Lead College Counselor

Born out of a deeply personal journey through the layered world of education, Mashal Counselling is more than a service, it’s a calling. The story of Mashal Counselling begins with a long, winding educational journey,  one filled with detours, redirections, and rediscoveries.

As an educationist with an evolving academic and professional path, I have journeyed through various fields, from economics to English instruction, and from policy studies to international educational leadership. Like many of the students I now support, I too experienced detours, uncertainties, and moments of questioning. But each twist and turn eventually led me to a profound realization: I was meant to guide others through their own journeys. I did not arrive at counselling in a straight line. I explored economics, taught language, worked in academic institutions, and pursued leadership in education, each chapter offering lessons, yet never quite feeling like the destination. I was searching not just for a career, but for meaning.

In a world of growing complexity and pressure, students deserve spaces of support, trust, and meaningful guidance. With over a decade of experience across teaching, counselling, and educational leadership, I created Mashal Counselling to be that space, where students are not just heard, but truly seen.

It was in the quiet, human moments with students, listening to their confusion, guiding them through crossroads, helping them reconnect with their “why”, that I felt something shift. I wasn’t just teaching or advising; I was illuminating paths. Not mine, theirs.

That’s how Mashal was born.

“Mashal” reflects not only my name but also my purpose. In Arabic, “Mashal” means torch, a symbol of guidance, clarity, and light. But more than that, it represents a philosophy: that every individual carries within them the spark of purpose, and that the role of a counsellor is to help nurture that spark until it lights the way forward. A torch lights the way, not by walking the path for others, but by enabling them to see their own with greater clarity. That is the essence of Mashal Counselling: to offer light, not answers; direction, not imposition; purpose, not pressure.

Today, Mashal Counselling stands on the foundation of that belief, that education should be liberating, not limiting. That counselling is not a fallback, but a force of leadership and transformation. And that those who guide with purpose can change the course of countless lives, starting with their own.