New Case Co-Written by Darden Student and Professor Team Explores Student Success at Elite School in Somaliland

Darden professor Rupert Freeman and recent Darden grad James Linville (MBA ’25) discovered an unlikely connection while brainstorming ideas to write a case together: both James and Rupert’s sister had previously worked at Abaarso School of Science and Technology in Somaliland, an independent region of Somalia. After realizing their shared interest, the duo ended up writing a case around an interesting challenge Linville worked on while he led the school as principal.

Abaarso is a unique school founded in 2009 by Jonathan Starr in an effort to help rebuild the country’s education system. The school aims to provide an elite education to the next generation of the country’s leaders. By 2019, graduates from Abaarso had earned nearly $50 million in scholarships to some of the top universities in the world, including Harvard University, Yale University, the University of Oxford and more.

Freeman and Linville wrote a case together based on Linville’s real experiences leading the school and analyzing the admissions exam to make sure it accurately identified students who would thrive in the program.

The case has already been used to teach analysis techniques in Darden’s Data Visualization and Analytics elective. The Darden Report caught up with Linville and Freeman to learn more about the case, their experience working together and why unique experiences like Linville’s make for great cases and learning opportunities.

Tell us about yourselves and how you came to work on this case together?

James Linville (MBA ’25) joined BCG in Atlanta in September.

Linville: I’m from New York City originally and first came to Charlottesville as a UVA undergrad (2011). I moved abroad to teach at Abaarso in Somaliland a few years after graduating. At the time, I didn’t have much certainty about what I wanted to do with my career, and thought Abaarso would just be a one-year experience before returning home. That changed only a few weeks after I arrived. I loved the students and the school’s mission, and the sense of all-in commitment from everyone was what I needed right then.

Somaliland can be a tough place to live, particularly for a foreigner, and in part because I was willing to stay there for more than 5 years, I eventually became the school principal. Though I left at the end of 2019 to move to Zimbabwe and found a school there, Abaarso and its community is still near and dear to me – several old advisees came to my wedding in 2022, and I’ll visit another at his graduation this year.

I came to Darden in 2023 following the opening of the school in Zimbabwe and three years as its founding head. At that point I’d had what sometimes felt like an entire career in education, but I still thought there was a narrow window of time to change industries if I wanted, and Darden felt like a nice way to do that. I was interested in operations – one of my favorite parts of running small, scrappy non-profit schools was the bootstrapping and creativity involved – and I was interested in becoming an operator on a larger scale and in learning from folks who actually do it professionally.

Rupert Freeman is an Assistant Professor in the Data Analytics and Decision Sciences area at Darden.

Freeman: Originally from New Zealand, I’ve been teaching here at Darden for 5 years in the Data Analytics and Decision Sciences area. Last spring I taught James in my Data Visualization and Analytics (DVA) first year elective. James came to me last fall to talk about some potential case writing opportunities, and in the brainstorming process he mentioned that he had led a school in Somaliland before coming to Darden. My ears perked up at that, because my sister had also spent time working at a school in Somaliland. Turns out it was the same school, Abaarso, which is now the subject of this case! That’s really a remarkable coincidence, for me and my sister to both leave New Zealand, one of us to Virginia and one to Somaliland, and both cross paths with James independently.

I never visited Abaarso while my sister worked there, but I’ve met some of their former students now studying in the US, and the school is close to my heart just because of the relationship that my sister has with it. Abaarso is really a fantastic success story and a model for what can be done when a few people all pull in the same direction. So I was thrilled that we got a chance to write about Abaarso and build some awareness.

What makes this a good case to study for Darden students? What do they learn most about?

Linville: From my perspective as a student, a good case has some basic analysis that can be accessed fairly quickly, followed by multiple layers of other questions or challenges that require more effort to get at. Good cases also tell stories that introduce us to new environments or help us think about ourselves and our careers in a setting that we wouldn’t previously have been inclined to. I also don’t love cases that have a clean resolution – if a solution is to be offered at the end of class, it should open up more questions even as it answers others.

Freeman: This is a good case for a couple of reasons. First, it’s a context that everyone can relate to and probably has an opinion on (education), but in a very different setting to what they’re likely used to (a developing country). So, it forces them to challenge some of their assumptions. Second, the quantitative analysis lends itself to a couple of different approaches at various levels of depth. Look at the case one way, you get one conclusion. Look at it a different way, you get another conclusion. As is typically the case in the real world, none of those conclusions are wrong, but only by doing a fully holistic analysis can you piece together the full story.

In terms of what students learn about, the case is an application of the regression analysis techniques they learn about in the first-year core Decision Analysis class. Like any good case, it’s not just about applying a technique or framework for the sake of analysis, but doing so to get insight that transfers into their own lives and careers.

Were you at the school during the events the case describes? How did it affect your job?

Linville: Yes, the case is based on a problem that we spent a few years thinking about while I was at Abaarso. The protagonist is a fictional character, based on a few folks I was working with at the time on analyzing our admissions exam to try to find the most talented young people across Somaliland, regardless of their prior education or financial circumstances.

I do want to call out, however, that the two people listed in the cases as the Co-Heads of School – Ahmed Qaalib and Tomoki Sasaki – are real people, and are indeed the current Co-Heads. Ahmed was a student when I first arrived and I coached him on the school basketball team, and his journey from student to now Head of School is an example of the kind of impact that we hope our alums will make. Tomoki, meanwhile, is the brother of someone I overlapped with at Abaarso for several years, and who continues to work as part of the larger Abaarso organization (which has now expanded from a high school to include a teacher’s college and a chain of primary schools).

Both represent the fact that Abaarso really has been created and sustained by a small group of people working against tremendous odds and challenges.

What did you learn most about helping students succeed during your time at Abaarso?

Linville: Abaarso taught me how powerful and compounding the effect of hard work over time is. That was by far the primary determinant of success among students. But it also taught me about how fragile that success can be. Single mistakes or periods of being unfocused can really derail people, especially those who are already in vulnerable situations by virtue of not having much to fall back on.

Abaarso was meant to be a place that would give those folks a real and predictable pathway to success, but so much of it is still up to them. Without giving away too much, one of the suggestions from the regression analysis in the case is how much of a determinant effort and sustained work are, relative to natural ability.

What makes for great cases to work on with students, and what was it like to work on this one with James?

Freeman: I think what makes a great case to work on with a student is when the student brings their own interest and experience. If I just have a student work on one of my ideas, that’s not very fun for anyone, and they’re not going to have as much ownership of the process. It’s also nice when the student gets to apply some of the things they learned during their time at Darden. I think this is true here. James took a real problem that he’d faced in the past, applied some of the tools that he now has under his belt, and came away with a new understanding of the problem that we’re now able to pass on to future students.

Working with James has been fantastic – one of the easiest academic collaborations I’ve had with anyone. After all his time working in education and now with two years of Darden classes under his belt, James has more teaching experience than me, has read more cases than me, and (obviously) knows Abaarso better than me. I’m just glad he needed me to sign the independent study paperwork! Really though, best of all is that I’ve learned a lot from working with him.

Buy the case from Darden Business Publishing.