Back in his MBA days, Mohan Ramalingam (MBA 1983) was known among sectionmates as a kind soul with a strong voice in class discussions, says Raphael Carty (MBA 1983). Few classmates knew until after Ramalingam’s death, on April 26, 2021, following a long battle with cancer, that he had been quietly supporting scores of students in his native Malaysia both academically and financially—and in many cases through graduate school.

The project started in 1996, in the midst of Ramalingam’s career in manufacturing and consulting, when a woman who cleaned his offices brought her 11-year-old daughter to work one day. The child, Malarkodi Suppamutharwyam, announced her intention to become a cardiologist. Knowing the challenges her family would face pursuing that goal, Ramalingam offered to mentor and tutor her. When it was time for her to apply to university, he helped her file applications for scholarships and government loans. Ramalingam personally funded whatever expenses the loans and scholarships didn’t cover, according to his widow, Hildegard Scheel.

Ramalingam repeated the pattern with scores of students—perhaps as many as 50 over the years, Scheel estimates. Monday through Friday he worked his day job, “then every Saturday he’d go back to the office to meet with all the children and their parents,” Scheel says. “At one point he was working with about 20 children at once, all at different stages of their education.”

It wasn’t easy work and oftentimes chaotic, she concedes—the children’s families sometimes needed medical assistance, and it certainly could get noisy in the house while Ramalingam and Scheel were also raising their own two children. But Scheel says her husband was motivated by a belief that helping one child get an education could help elevate an entire family out of the cycle of poverty.

At least 11 of his students have gone on to become doctors, according to family records, including his very first student: Dr. Malarkodi opted to became an internal medicine specialist rather than a cardiologist. She works in a COVID hospital in Malaysia and stayed in close contact with her mentor over the years. Speaking to Ramalingam on the phone one day, she noticed he had developed a cough and urged him to see a doctor. That visit led to a diagnosis of the cancer that would ultimately take his life. “It was due to her care and concern that Mohan lived another few years after his diagnosis,” Scheel says.

For Carty, what stands out in Ramalingam’s story is the fact he made a difference in the world without any expectation of recognition, in keeping with his humble approach to life. “Mohan’s life was a lesson in having a purpose-driven definition of success before it was fashionable,” Carty says.

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