IAAB Board of Advisors
Narges Bajoghli - Co-Founder and Board Member
Ms. Bajoghli is a M.A. candidate in the Social Sciences at the University of Chicago focusing on Political Science and Anthropology. Ms. Bajoghli graduated with honors from Wellesley College with a B.A. in International Relations and Middle Eastern Studies. After completing her thesis on the ways in which Iranian women reinterpret the shari'a in media, she was awarded the Susan Knafel Fellowship to study and research at the University of Tehran's Faculty of Law and Political Science. While in Iran, Ms. Bajoghli worked on various projects in Bam with local NGOs, spending most of her time focusing on curriculum development in education centers for elementary school-aged children. She also worked on a PBS Wide Angle documentary on the Iranian press and the 2005 presidential elections, entitled Red Lines and Deadlines, as well as IAAB's Project Connection in Iran. Ms. Bajoghli's focus on the politics of the Middle East led her to study at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (SOAS), as well as in Rabat, Morocco. Ms. Bajoghli was also a country coordinator in Nicaragua for Global Learning, an international non-profit organization involved in public education across Central America, and she spent extensive periods of time in Central America. Ms. Bajoghli has organized and led university groups to study the literature and history of Cuba at La Casa de Las Americas in Havana where she had previously spent time studying at La Universidad de la Havana. Ms. Bajoghli founded IAAB with Nikoo Paydar in 2003 and has served on its Board of Advisors since the summer of 2006.
Ramin Bajoghli - Former Co-Executive Director and Board Member
Mr. Bajoghli graduated from Boston University in 2006 with a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and in Political Science. Mr. Bajoghli has worked with IAAB since its inception in 2003, holding numerous positions including New England Area Coordinator, Operations Coordinator, Development Coordinator, and most recently Co-Executive Director. Prior to his work with IAAB, Mr. Bajoghli was an active member of Global Learning (GL), a non-profit/non-governmental organization dedicated to the advancement of public education in Latin America. While working with GL, he served as a Country Coordinator in San Jorge, Nicaragua, leading a group of 25 volunteers from 4 different countries to teach over 400 children in 5 public schools. Currently, Mr. Bajoghli is a freelance photographer and TV Producer working mainly in Washington D.C. and New York City. Mr. Bajoghli's interest in film, photography, travel, and social issues led him to direct, write, and produce numerous projects in Nicaragua and Iran including Only In Iran!, a short documentary/narrative exploring the dual identities of Iranian-Americans. He is currently working on several projects including a documentary, entitled In Search of Socrates.
Shirin Hakimzadeh - Former Co-Executive Director and Board Member
Shirin is a law student at Georgetown University Law Center. Prior to starting law school, she worked as a researcher at a Washington D.C.-based think tank that conducts public opinion polls on various social issues, attitudes and trends. Ms. Hakimzadeh holds a bachelor degree with honors from Rice University in her hometown of Houston, and a master's degree from Oxford University, where she studied Social and Cultural Anthropology as the recipient of the Wagoner Scholarship. She has conducted extensive fieldwork in Mexico, Chile, and London, where she wrote her master's thesis on the integration of second-generation Iranians. Since then, she has written several articles on the Iranian foreign-born in the US and on migration issues relevant to Iran for the Migration Policy Institute. Ms. Hakimzadeh is particularly interested in the intersection of immigration, national security and constitutional rights.
Amy Malek - Board Member
Amy Malek is a graduate student at UCLA, working towards a PhD in Sociocultural Anthropology. She received her M.A. from New York University in the Program for Near Eastern Studies in 2005, and her B.A. in International Studies and Middle Eastern Studies from Emory University in 2003. Ms. Malek is particularly interested in visual culture, media, and the negotiation of diasporic identity through cultural production in Iran and the Iranian diaspora.
Nikoo Paydar - Co-Founder and Board Member
Nikoo Paydar is an M.A. History of Art candidate at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, on a Stavros S. Niarchos Foundation Scholarship. She has served as a contractor for the Smithsonian Institution Office of Policy and Analysis in Washington, D.C. and Contemporary Curatorial Intern at the Drawing Center in New York City. She holds a B.A. in the History of Art from Tufts University, where she was a Citizenship and Public Service Scholar and a Tufts Institute for Leadership and International Perspective Student Fellow. Ms. Paydar studied for one year at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, where she created a photo-journal exhibition of Iranian lifestyle and culture that was shown in Boston and London. She co-curated IAAB's TRANSFORM/NATION: Contemporary Art of Iran and Its Diaspora.