Mariam Memarsadeghi

Early life and education

Mariam Memarsadeghi was born in Tehran, Iran and lived there until the 1979 revolution, when she emigrated to the United States with her parents. Memarsadeghi attended Frederick High School in Frederick, Maryland, where she earned the Principal's Award and served as editor-in-chief of the school newspaper. She earned her BA degree in political science in 1994 from Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA. While at Dickinson, Memarsadeghi spent an academic year studying European history and politics in Bologna, Italy. Upon graduating, she enrolled in a PhD program in political theory at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst but left the program in 1997 with an MA degree.

Work

Memarsadeghi created the Tavaana E-Learning Institute for Iranian Civil Society in 2010, together with her husband Akbar Atri, a former Iranian student leader and democracy activist. Tavaana is a project of the E-Collaborative for Civic Education, a 501c3 nonprofit organization founded by Memarsadeghi and Atri and based in Bethesda, MD.

Tavaana is Iran's pioneer elearning institution, building the capacity of Iranian civil society with secure, virtual civic education on censored topics such as democracy, women's rights, Islamic reformation, secularism and religious freedom, labor organizing, NGO management, advocacy and activism. Tavaana's spin-off TavaanaTech service provides Iranians with timely, reliable guidance on technology, including free and safe Internet access and digital safety. Tavaana and TavaanaTech's robust social networks and satellite broadcasts of educational programming reach millions of Iranians.

Google has supported the Tavaana and TavaanaTech projects and provides a feature on Memarsadeghi on the Google Ideas/Jigsaw homepage. Other supporters include the US Department of State, USAID, the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Endowment for Democracy. Partner institutions include the Center for Civic Education, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Albert Shanker Institute and Freedom House.

The Tolerance Project is another initiative conceived by Memarsadeghi. This Arabic, Persian, English educational venture works to inspire conscience, pluralism and celebration of difference throughout the Middle East region.

Memarsadeghi is an outspoken advocate for liberalism, civic responsibility, women's rights, civil liberties, and Internet freedom, particularly in Islamic contexts. She previously directed the Middle East and North Africa portfolio of programs at Freedom House, and worked for over two years in the Balkan region for the International Rescue Committee and the International Organization for Migration.

Media commentary

Memarsadeghi provides media commentary on issues such as democratic transition, women's rights, civil society, civic education, Middle East politics, internet freedom, and social media. She has participated in several NPR programs, the PBS NewsHour and To the Contrary. She has also appeared on Persian and Arabic language radio and television programs and is frequently interviewed about Iranian politics in both English and Persian.

Her writing has been published in journals and in newspapers including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The Globe and Mail.

Public speaking

Memarsadeghi has spoken on issues related to democracy at universities around the world and research institutions such as American Enterprise Institute, Aspen Institute, Council for Community of Democracies, Council of Europe, Freedom House, Legatum Institute, Project on Middle East Democracy, Silicon Valley RightsCon, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars., the Clingendael Netherlands Institute of International Relations, Oxford Internet Institute, the Ditchley Foundation, the National Endowment for Democracy and the Danish Institute for Human Rights.

She has delivered public talks in Persian language, such as at the Conference of the Association of Friends of Persian Culture, an annual gathering of over 3,000 organized by Iranian Baha'is in Chicago.

Awards and distinctions

Memarsadeghi is a 2017 Presidential Leadership Scholar.

Memarsadeghi was selected in 2007 as a "Transatlantic Young Leader" by the German Marshall Fund and the Bertelsmann Foundation.

She serves as a finalist judge in the annual We the People competition, a nationwide contest on democratic knowledge and the US Constitution among American high school students. The competition is organized by the Center for Civic Education.