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WHO WE ARE.

Dr. Parviz Mina

Chair

Following the completion of his PhD in petroleum engineering in England, Dr. Parviz Mina served in the Iranian Oil Industry for 28 years holding a number of important positions. Prior to his departure from Iran he was a member of the Board of Directors and Managing Director of International Affairs of National Iranian Oil Company. Dr. Mina has also served as a member of OPEC Long Term Strategy Committee and an International Petroleum Adviser with a number of international oil companies, the United Nations Center on Transnational Corporations and the Group for International Studies and Evaluations. Dr. Mina is a strong advocate for education.

Dori Dana-Haeri

Vice-Chair

Dori has a wide-ranging experience of the strategic problems facing industries. After a career as a management consultant, she now has a portfolio of interests.  Her portfolio includes advisor/board member to a number of organizations. These include the investment committee of a significant corporate Venture where she performs strategic marketing due diligence; an early-stage Agri- tech company, advising them on how to go to market with their environmentally innovative products, a pre-IPO unicorn with a unique technology in Israel and -a global multi-family office and independent investment firm where she works on direct investments.

She has sat for many years on the board of trustees of several charities in the UK and Africa. She was chair of the London Development and a Trustee of Maggie’s Cancer Care and a Trustee of the Persia Educational Foundation. Dori was the founder and General Partner of Eden Ventures an early-stage technology venture capital fund, and Executive Chairman of Above Wealth an innovative wealth management start-up. Dori is the founder of DDH Consultants working with fortune 500 companies on growth and innovation.

Nazenin Ansari

Founder & Secretary General
Nazenin Ansari is the Founder and Secretary General of the Board of Trustees of Persia Educational Foundation. The Managing Director of the multimedia Kayhan-London, she is a Trustee of the Foreign Press Association in London, she serves as on the Board of Directors of Encyclopedia Iranica at Columbia University. Elected to the governing Committee of the Foreign Press Association in London, she served as President, Vice President and organised “Women as Agents of Change” symposium. Nazenin has worked with and been a member of a number of educational and charitable foundations, including the Friends of Persian Language Society at Cambridge, Benefactors of Kahrizak, the Iran Heritage Foundation, the award-winning Mihan Foundation, the Popli Khalatbari Foundation and Magic of Persia. She is a member of Chatham House, the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Abdolreza Ansari

(1930-2020)
The late Abdolreza Ansari, one of our founding trustees, was a well-known personality in contemporary Iran. Educated in Iran and the United States, he held several key posts to develop his country and improve life for its citizens: Treasurer General, Minister of Labor & Social Affaires, Minister of Interior, Founder of Workers Welfare Bank, Governor General and Managing Director of Khuzestan Water & Power Authority, Deputy Chair of the High Council for Celebration of 2500 anniversary of Persian monarchy at Persepolis, Managing Director of the Imperial Organization for Social Services, which supported over sixty charitable organisations. He planned and implemented the National Campaign for Philanthropy, and the country-wide program for protection of families who had lost their support. While living far from post revolutionary Iran, he continued to dedicate his time and resources to advance the Iranian community. For more information please see “The Shah’s Iran, Rise and Fall” on www.ibtauris.com

Kamran Hashemi

Treasurer

Kamran Hashemi has worked in investment banking in London for over 30 years. He has been a long-standing supporter of educational and charitable organisations serving the community at large. Kamran is a member of the Board of Arseh Sevom and previously a founding member and member of the Board of Iranian Community Centre established in 1983 to offer legal advisory services to asylum seekers in London, a member of the board of trustees of Science and Arts Foundation, Honorary Treasurer of British Institute at Ankara (BIAA) and a founding member of United4Iran-London.

Reza Ansari

Trustee

Reza Ansari obtained his BS and MBA from the Wharton School and MA from the Lauder Institute at the University of Pennsylvania. Reza is the Vice President of Global Value Creation, EMEA (Europe Middle East & Africa), at the EMEA headquarters of the Estée Lauder Companies, in Paris. Reza has held positions of increasing responsibility at the Estée Lauder Companies in the US, Asia and Europe, over the past 20 years. His positions have included: Director of Corporate Strategy, Executive Director of International Finance & Strategy (Estée Lauder brand); Regional Director of Asia and President of Korea (Aveda brand); Vice President of Strategy & Corporate Initiatives, EMEA; and most recently Global General Manager (Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle brand).

Nina Ansari

Trustee

Nina Ansary is an award-winning Iranian American author, historian, and leading authority on women’s rights in Iran. Her books Anonymous Is a Woman: A Global Chronicle of Gender Inequality (Revela Press/2020) and Jewels of Allah: The Untold Story of Women in Iran (Revela Press/2015) garnered multiple awards, including the 2016 International Book Award in “Women’s Issues” (Jewels of Allah) and the 2021 Benjamin Franklin Book Award in “Interior Design” and “History” (Anonymous Is a Woman). She is the Director of the World Affairs Councils of America (WACA) Global Women’s Lecture Series and the Director of the Women’s Leadership Initiative (WLI) at The Middle East and North Africa Forum at the University of Cambridge. In 2017, she was invited to be a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics Centre for Women, Peace and Security and in 2018, she was appointed as UN Women Global Champion for Innovation. She is the recipient of the 2020 Columbia University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Alumni Award, the 2019 Ellis Island Medal of Honor, the 2018 Barnard College, Columbia University Trailblazer Award, and has been recognized as one of “10 Inspirational Women (who) Should be Household Names” by The Hill, one of “Five Iranian Visionaries You Need to Know” by The New York Times and one of “14 Privileged Women to Change the World” by Marie Claire. Dr. Ansary has appeared on CNN International, Fox News, Larry King, the BBC, Sky News and been featured in a variety of publications, including Time, Newsweek, The Los Angeles Times, CNN.com, Teen Vogue and the Yale Journal of International Affairs. She regularly presents her work on women’s rights at universities including Columbia, Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge, as well as the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security, the UN Social Good and Girl Up Global Leadership Summits. Ansary holds an MA in Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies and a Ph.D. in History from Columbia University. She serves on the International Advisory Board of the Cambridge Middle East and North Africa Forum (MENAF); a think-tank based at the University of Cambridge, the Board of Trustees of the Iranian American Women Foundation (IAWF), and the Board of Directors of My Stealthy Freedom (MSF); an independent, nonpartisan, non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of Iranian women’s actions to secure their rights.

Dr. Shaheen Fatemi

Trustee

Dr. Shaheen Fatemi is a Professor Emeritus of Economics at the American University of Paris and the University of Akron in the United States of America.

Dr. Tahirih T. Danesh

Execution Director

Tahirih T. Danesh (Ph.D. law) is a researcher in the use of technology and education to advance access to socio-economic rights. She manages Persia’s programmes, projects and daily affairs on behalf of our Board of Trustees. To contact Tahirih please email: info@persia.education