Behnaz Sarafpour is an Iranian-American New York City-based designer who introduced a line of women’s apparel bearing her name in 2001. She attended Parsons School of Design, where she was honored with the Golden Thimble Award, and has held design positions at Isaac Mizrahi, Narciso Rodriguez, Richard Tyler, Anne Klein, and Barneys New York. Her collections are presented in New York with the …

Cyrus Nowrasteh was born in September 19, 1956 and is an Iranian-American screenwriter and director of theatrical films, television shows, and made-for-TV movies. He is best known for his involvement in the controversial docudrama The Path to 9/11. Of Iranian descent, he was born in Boulder, Colorado, and grew up in Madison, Wisconsin. Nowrasteh attended New Mexico State University on an athletic scholarship and …

Seyyed Hossein Nasr was born on April 7, 1933 and is an Iranian-American University Professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University, and a prominent Islamic philosopher. He is the author of many scholarly books and articles. Nasr is a Muslim Persian philosopher and renowned scholar of comparative religion, and writes in the fields of Islamic esoterism, Sufism, philosophy of science, and metaphysics. Nasr was the …

Amir Naderi was born in August 15, 1946 in Abadan and is an Iranian-American film director, screenwriter, and photographer. He is best known for The Runner and Vegas: Based on a True Story. Amir Naderi grew up in Abadan. He became interested in photography and cinema at an early age. As a filmmaker he was inspired by Henri Cartier-Bresson’s photography of urban experience …

Isaac Larian was born in March 28, 1954 in Kashan, Iran and is an Iranian-American businessman and entrepreneur. He is the Chief Executive Officer of MGA Entertainment, the biggest privately owned toy company in the world. Born to a Jewish family in Iran, Larian arrived to the United States alone at the age of 17. After graduating from California State University, Los Angeles in civil engineering, he started a business exporting …

Siavash Alamouti is an Iranian-American engineer who is best known for the invention of the so-called Alamouti space–time block code, filed in 1997 and patented jointly with Vahid Tarokh. Alamouti’s code is a 2 transmit antenna space-time block code and has been adopted in various global standards. Formerly an Intel Fellow and the CTO of Mobile Wireless Group at Intel Corp., since March 2010 he is …

Omid R. Kordestani was born in 1963 in Tehran, Iran and is an Iranian-American businessman who works as senior advisor to the Office of the CEO and Founders at Google and as Non-Executive Director at Vodafone. Omid Kordestani was born in Tehran, Iran and grew up there attending Andisheh Don Bosco School, an Italian Catholic school in Tehran that emphasized education and language skills. He …

Ehsan Yarshater was born in April 3, 1920 and is the Iranian-American founder and director of The Center for Iranian Studies, and Hagop Kevorkian Professor Emeritus of Iranian Studies at Columbia University. He was the first full-time professor of Persian Studies at a U.S. university since World War II. Born in Hamedan, Iran to a middle class family, …

Alecko Eskandarian was born July 9, 1982 in New Jersey and is an Iranian-American former soccer player. He is of Armenian-Iranian descent and is the son of former soccer player Andranik Eskandarian, who played soccer professionally for the New York Cosmos, and the Iranian national football team. Alecko last played for Major League Soccer team Los Angeles Galaxy. He currently is the assistant coach for New York Cosmos. Prior …

Soroosh Sorooshian is an Iranian-American distinguished professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California Irvine and currently serving as the Director of the Center for Hydrometeorology and Remote Sensing. Dr. Sorooshian was born in Kerman, Iran in 1948 and is a member of such prestigious organizations as the National Academy of Engineering and the International Academy of Astronautics. He was also a chairman for the Global Energy and Water …

Amir Ali Sadollah was born August 27, 1980 and is an Iranian-American professional mixed martial artist. Sadollah was born in Brooklyn, New York but raised in Richmond, Virginia to an Iranianfather and an Irish-American mother. Amir began mixed martial arts as a way to stay in shape. He began to take the sport more seriously after working as a surgical technologist at VCU Healthsystems and …

Kami Barzini is an Iranian-American wrestler. He was born in Iran and started wrestling at the age of 12. Kami 2x Cadet/Junior National Champion in Iran and Ranked Top 3 for 2 consecutive years in Iran. Barzini wrestled in Olympic Trials 2000 and helped coach in 2004 and ’08 the U.S. Olympic Trials. He has a lot …

Reza Aslan was born on May 3, 1972 and is an Iranian-American writer and scholar of religions. He is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside, a Research Associate at the University of Southern California Center on Public Diplomacy, and a contributing editor for The Daily Beast. His books include the international bestseller No god but God: …

Ramin Bahrani was born on March 20, 1975 and is an Iranian-American director and screenwriter. Bahrani was born in North Carolina, to Iranian parents. He received his BA from Columbia University in New York City. His first feature film, Man Push Cart (2005), premiered at the Venice Film Festival (2005) and screened at the Sundance Film Festival (2006). The film won over 10 international prizes, was released theatrically around the world, and was …

Homayoon Kazerooni is a roboticist and professor of Mechanical Engineering at theUniversity of California, Berkeley. Dr. Kazerooni is the director of the Berkeley Robotics and Human Engineering Laboratory and also the Co-founder and Chief Scientist of Berkeley Bionics. The Berkeley Robotics and Human Engineering Laboratory is also affectionately known as “KAZ LAB”. Dr. Kazerooni’s work focuses on the control of human-machine systems …

Maziar Jobrani is an Iranian-American comedian and actor.  He performs stand-up live comedy around the world, and has appeared on various popular talk shows, TV shows and films.  Most notably, he has performed on The Tonight Show and The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, and has guest starred in over fifty TV shows, including …

Farzad “Freddy” Bonyadi was born in 1959 in Tehran, Iran and is an Iranian-american professional pokerplayer based in California. He has won 3 World Series of Poker bracelets. Bonyadi moved from Iran to America in 1983, where he worked as an executive host in the LA Commerce Casino and as a shift manager at Hollywood Park Casino. Bonyadi first came to …

Dr. David B. Samadi is the Chairman of Urology, Chief of Robotic Surgery at Lenox Hill Hospital, and Professor of Urology at Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine in New York City. He is a world renowned board-certified urologist and an oncologist specializing in the diagnosis and treatment of urologic diseases, prostate cancer, kidney cancer andbladder cancer, and specializes in advanced minimally invasive …

Ferial Govashiri currently serves as the Personal Secretary to the President of the United States. She got her bachelor of political science from University of California, Irvine in 2005 and got into Politics in 2007 when she joined Obama’s Presidential Campaign working in the Department of Scheduling and Advance at his Chicago Headquarters. After the …

Ahoo Jahansouz (Sarah Shahi) was born in 1980 and is an Iranian-American television actress. Shahi was born and grew up in Euless, Texas. She is the daughter of Mah Monir, an interior designer, and Abbas Jahansouz Shahi. She has one older brother and a younger sister. Her father’s family left Iran two years before the Iranian Revolution. She is a descendant …

Ala Ebtekar was born in July 21, 1978. He is an American-based visual artist who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Ebtekar is known primarily for his work in painting, drawing, and installation that explores the juncture between history and myth, forging a multi-faceted project that melds Persian mythology, science, philosophy and pop culture together. …

Mark Changizi, Iranian-American theoretical neurobiologist, science writer, and author, was born in 1969 in New Jersey to an Iranian physician father and an American mother. Mark got his bachelor in Physics and Math from University of Virginia in 1991 and his Math PhD from University of Maryland in 1997. Mark not only studied math during PhD, …

Ida Saki is a dancer, dance teacher, Mind Body Dancer Yoga instructor, choreographer, and performer. She was born and raised in Dallas, where she graduated from Booker T. Washington Performing Arts Center with honors; she then moved to New York City to continue her education and training at New York University. She continues to keep a close relationship with her Iranian …

Sahar Nowrouzzadeh is an Iranian-American foreign policy expert and was born in Connecticut in 1982 to Iranian parents. Her parents immigrated to the United States from Iran nearly 50 years ago when her father began his residency as an OB/GYN. Sahar currently serves as a Director for Iran on the National Security Council (NSC) at …

Bobak Ferdowsi was born on November 7, 1979 and is an Iranian-American systems engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He served on the Cassini–Huygens and Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity mission. Ferdowsi was born November 7, 1979, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is of Persiandescent; his father immigrated to the United States from Iran. His parents met in college. Soon after birth he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area where he stayed …

Dr. Saba Valadkhan  is an Iranian American biomedical scientist, and an Assistant Professor and RNA researcher at Case Western Reserve University. Saba Valadkhan was born in Tehran in 1974 to bright parents who had a great influence on her. She was qualified as a medical doctor in Iran, before moving to the United States to pursue post-graduate study at Columbia University in New York. In 2005, she …

Dr. Jamal Yagoobi received a BS in mechanical engineering from Sharif University of Technology in Iran and received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign in mechanical engineering in 1984. After receiving his Ph.D., he worked for Westvaco Corporation as a research engineer before joining Texas A&M University in 1987, where he …

Farzaneh Milani is an Iranian-American scholar and author. She teaches Persian literature and Women’s Studies at the University of Virginia. Milani is Chair of the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures. She is also a poet, award-winning translator, and a recipient of the Carnegie Fellowship and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Milani’s 1992 book Veils and Words: …

Abass Alavi is a physician-scientist specializing in the field of molecular imaging, most notably in the imaging modality of positron emission tomography (PET). Professor Alavi was born in Iran-Tabriz and received his medical degree from the Tehran University of Medical Sciences in 1964. He began his training in internal medicine at the Albert Einstein Medical Center and the Philadelphia VA Hospital …

Tanaz Eshaghian was born on September 8, 1974 in Iran and is an Iranian-American documentary filmmaker. Tanaz Eshaghian left Iran with her mother at the age of six. She grew up in New York City, went to Trinity School and graduated from Brown University in 1996 with a BA in Semiotics. Her first film “I Call Myself Persian,” completed in 2002, told …

Hamid Akhavan-Malayeri was born in 1961 in Tehran, Iran. Hamid is an Iranian-American business executive, and the CEO of Unify GmbH & Co. KG (formerly Siemens Enterprise Communications) since February 2010. Hamid Akhavan holds Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the California Institute of Technology (CALTECH) and a Master’s degree in the same fields from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Hamid has …

Bahar Soomekh was born in March 30, 1975 and is an Iranian-born American actress and environmental activist. Bahar was born in Tehran, Iran, to a devout Persian Jewish family. She moved with her parents and sister, Saba Soomekh, to Los Angeles, California, United States in 1979 during the Iranian Revolution. Bahar speaks fluent English, Persian, Spanish, and some Hebrew. She attended Sinai Akiba Academy and Beverly Hills High School, where she played the violin in the …

Dara Khosrowshahi was born in Tehran in May 28, 1969  and is an Iranian-American businessman and the CEO of Expedia, Inc. Khosrowshahi received a B.S. in Bioelectrical Engineering from Brown University in 1991. Dara Khosrowshahi has served as CEO of Expedia, Inc., the world’s largest online travel company, since August 2005. Under his leadership, Expedia has extended its global presence to more than 60 …

Roya Hakakian was born in 1966 in Iran and is an Iranian-American poet, journalist and writer living in the United States. Born and raised in a Persian Jewish family in Tehran, Hakakian lived through the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and actively supported it along with other liberals. As the Iran-Iraq war raged and restrictive laws became more common, she immigrated unwillingly to the United States …

Deep Dish is a duo of DJs and house-music producers consisting of Iranian-American members Ali “Dubfire” Shirazinia and SharamTayebi. Based in Washington, D.C., Shirazinia and Tayebi are well known for providing house or dance remixes of tracks of famous stars such as Madonna, Janet Jackson, Cher and Gabrielle, and for their live DJing sets. They often collaborate with artist Richard Morel and produced a dance hit with his song “True (The Faggot is You)”. …

Farnaz Fassihi was born in 1971 and is an award winning Iranian-American journalist. She is a senior staff writer for The Wall Street Journal covering the Middle East. Farnaz Fassihi was born in the United States to Iranian parents and grew up in Tehran and Portland, Oregon. She received an M.S. in journalism from Columbia …

Antonio “The Magician” Esfandiari, was born as Amir Esfandiari in December 8, 1978 and is a professional Iranian-American poker player and former professional magician. Esfandiari was born in Tehran, Iran. When he was nine years old, his family moved to San Jose, California. He graduated from Del Mar High School in 1997. At the age of 19, he changed his name to Antonio, …

Yara Sayeh Shahidi who was born on February 10, 2000 is an Iranian-American actress. Shahidi was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to an American mother, Keri-Salter Shahidi, and an Iranian father, Afshin Shahidi, a photographer. The family moved to California, for Afshin’s work, when Yara was 4. She is the older sister of child actor Sayeed Shahidi. She began her career when …

Doctor Ramin Najafi is an Iranian-American chemist. Having emigrated from Iran to study in 1978, Ramin Najafi’s future plans were thrown into disarray by the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Under the guidance of Professor John Soderquist at University of San Francisco, he earned a B.S. and M.S. in chemistry, and then received his Ph.D. at University of California at …

Doreen Granpeesheh was born in 1963 and is an Iranian-American clinical psychologist and a PHD holder. Doreen was born in Tehran, Iran and went to school in England and Switzerland. Because of the Islamic Revolution, her parents chose for her to live in the United States where she completed grade school. At fifteen years of age, she received …

Nader Engheta was born in October 8, 1955 in Tehran and is an Iranian-American scientist. He is currently the H. Nedwill Ramsey Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, affiliated with the departments of Electrical and Systems Engineering, Bioengineering, and Physics and Astronomy. He earned his Masters and PhD degrees from the California Institute of Technology, and his B.S. degree from the school …

Shohreh Aghdashloo was born in May 11, 1952 in Tehran, as Shohreh Vaziri-Tabar (“Aghdashloo” is the family name of her former husband, Iranian painter Aydin Aghdashloo) to a wealthy family, and is an Iranian American actress. Aghdashloo started acting at the age of 18. Following numerous starring roles on the stage, she was offered her first film role in Gozāresh (The …

Baba Ali was born Ali Ardekani in October 29, 1975 and is an Iranian-American comedian, games developer, businessman and actor. Although born into a Persian family, he was raised in a secular irreligious household in Los Angeles, California. From the age of 18, he studied many religions. At the age of 20, Ali converted to Islam after attending an Islamic camp. A worker in the IT field by profession in California, Ali …

Lily Afshar is an Iranian-American classical guitarist. Lily was born in Tehran. At ten years of age she first encountered the guitar and found out about her love for music while visiting a cousin who was taking lessons. Her prodigious skill and love of music eventually led her to The Boston Conservatory, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in …

Nima Arkani-Hamed was born in April 5th 1972 and is an Iranian-American theoretical physicist with interests in high-energy physics. Arkani-Hamed is now on the faculty at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He was formerly a professor at Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley. Arkani-Hamed’s parents are both Iranian physicists. His father was chairman of the physics department at Sharif University of Technology in Tehran. Arkani-Hamed graduated from the University of …

Atoosa Rubenstein was born Atoosa Behnegar in Tehran, Iran in 1972 and is an Iranian-American entrepreneur and editor. She was the editor-in-chief of Seventeen magazine and also the founding editor of CosmoGIRL! She is currently the founder of Big Momma Productions, Inc. and Atoosa.com. She was three when her family moved to Queens, New York and then later to Malverne, on Long Island. As an undergraduate …

Ali Javan was born in December 26, 1926 and is an Iranian-American physicist and inventor at MIT. His main contributions to science have been in the fields of quantum physics and spectroscopy. He co-invented the gas laser in 1960, with William R. Bennett. In 2007 Javan was ranked Number 12 on the Telegraph newspaper list of the “Top 100 Living Geniuses”. Ali Javan was born in Tehran to Iranian parents …

Nadia Alexandra Bjorlin was born in August 2, 1980 in Newport, Rhode Island and is an Iranian-American actress, singer, musician and model. Her parents are the Swedish composer and conductor Mats Ulf Stefan Björlin and Fary Dadashi, an Interior Designer from Iran. Björlin is fluent in English, Swedish, and Persian and is also schooled in the French, Italian, and Russian. She attended the Interlochen Center for the Arts and the Boston University Tanglewood …

Nariman Farvardin is an Iranian-American engineer and president at Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, New Jersey. Formerly Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost at the University of Maryland, College Park, he took office at Stevens on 1 July 2011. Farvardin was born in Tehran, Iran. He holds bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. In 1984, one year after earning his doctorate, he …

Porochista Khakpour was born in 1978 in Tehran and is an Iranian-American novelist, essayist and writer. Porochista was born in Tehran and was raised in South Pasadena, California and the Los Angeles area. Khakpour attended Sarah Lawrence College in New York for her BA, majoring in Creative Writing and Literature. She received her MA from Johns Hopkins University and the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars. After receiving her …

Navid Negahban was born in June 2, 1968 in Mashhad, Iran and is an Iranian American actor. Negahban took a liking to theater when he was 8 years old while provoking laughter from a large audience by portraying an old man on stage. He left Iran when he was 20 for Turkey and then Germany, where he spent eight-and-a-half years. In Germany, he worked for …

Shahrnush Parsipur was born on February 17, 1946 in Tehran and is an Iranian-American writer and novelist. She is the daughter of an attorney in the Iranian Justice Ministry originally from Shiraz. Born and raised in Tehran, she received her B.A. in sociology from Tehran University in 1973 and studied Chinese language and civilization at the Sorbonne from 1976 to 1980. Shahrnush …

Hamid Jafarkhani was born in 1966 in Tehran, and is an Iranian-American Chancellor’s Professor in electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California, Irvine’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering. His research focuses on communications theory, particularly coding and wireless communications and networks. Prior to studying at the University of Tehran, he was ranked first in the nationwide entrance examination of Iranian universities in 1984. After receiving his B.S. degree in 1989, he studied at the University …

Mahnaz Afkhami was born in Kerman, Iran in 1941 and is the Iranian-American Founder and President of Women’s Learning Partnership (WLP). She is also the Executive Director of the Foundation for Iranian Studies and former Minister of Women’s Affairs of Iran. Her early childhood was spent in Kerman, Iran. When she was 11 a part of her family moved to the United …

Vartan Gregorian was born on April 8, 1934 in Tabriz, Iran to a Christian Armenian family and is an Iranian-Armenian academic, currently serving as the president of Carnegie Corporation of New York. Gregorian was six years old when his mother, then twenty-six, died of pneumonia. His father, who worked for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in Abadan, was away from home …

Soraya Darabi received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Art History from Georgetown University. She is a renowned digital entrepreneur and pioneer in the social media landscape, Soraya is a leading authority on digital commerce and ways to apply new technologies to help foster efficiency, visibility and growth. Most recently, Soraya is the co-founder of …

Mohsen Mostafavi was born in 1954 and is an Iranian-American architect and educator. He is the Dean and a Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He has been the Gale and Ira Drukier Dean of the College of Architecture, Art and Planning at Cornell University, and the Chairman of the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. Mostafavi received a diploma in architecture from the Architectural Association in 1976 and undertook research …

Christiane Amanpour is a television news anchor and foreign correspondent who has spent her career working for the American news network Cable Network News and the American news program 60 Minutes. She is of British and Iranian descent and is a naturalized American citizen. She is famous for having covered stories in many conflict zones, …

Dr. Naderi is the director for the Solar System Exploration Directorate at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Formerly, he was the associate director for Project Formulation and Strategy (2005-2011) providing oversight of new business acquisition and strategic planning at JPL. Prior to that, he was the head of the Mars Exploration Program (2000-2005) a span of …

Nasim Pedrad, Hollywood Actress who is on the cast of Saturday Night Live was born in Tehran, Iran. Pedrad and her parents lived in Tehran until 1984, before emigrating to the United States when Nasim was two years old. She was raised in Irvine, California, and graduated from University High School, and the UCLA School of Theater …

Cumrun Vafa is an Iranian-American leading string theorist from Harvard University where he started as a Harvard Junior Fellow. He is a recipient of the 2008 Dirac Medal. Cumrun Vafa was born in Tehran, Iran in 1960. He graduated from Alborz High School and went to the US in 1977. He got his undergraduate degree …

Leila Vaziri is an American swimmer, the 2007 world champion and a former world record holder in the 50 m backstroke. Vaziri completed her collegiate swimming career at Indiana University where she was majoring in communication and culture. She was 2005 Big Ten Champion in the 100 yard backstroke and the 2007 NCAA bronze medalist …

Jamshid “Jimmy” Delshad is an Iranian-American politician in the state of California. He became Mayor of Beverly Hills on March 21, 2007 and again on March 16, 2010.[2] He is the first Iranian-American to hold public office in Beverly Hills. Delshad left Shiraz, Iran in 1959 and came to the United States with his brothers. …

Goli Ameri is an Iranian-American diplomat, politician and businesswoman from the U.S. state of Oregon. She is the former Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Values and Diplomacy for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. She is also the former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs. She ran …

Gholam A. Peyman, MD recipient of National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the nation’s highest honor for technological achievement, bestowed by the President of the United States, President Obama, on America’s leading innovators and a Hall of Fame of Ophthalmology and retina surgeon who is also a prolific and successful inventor. Gholam Peyman has, thus …

Cyrus Habib is an attorney and politician from the U.S. state of Washington. In 2012, Habib, a Democrat, was elected to represent Washington’s 48th Legislative District, which includes Bellevue, Clyde Hill, Hunts Point, Kirkland, Medina, Redmond, and Yarrow Point, in the Washington State House of Representatives. He is a Rhodes Scholar, a Truman Scholar, and …

Rudi Bakhtiar (Rudabeh Bakhtiar) is the first Iranian American journalist to anchor a prime time news hour in the United States, called “CNN Headline News Tonight”. She has over a decade experience working for major international news outlets CNN and Fox News Channel. Bakhtiar was the Director of Communications for the International Campaign for Human …

Anousheh Ansari born September in Mashhad, Iran is an engineer and the Iranian-American co-founder and chairwoman of Prodea Systems. Her previous business accomplishments include serving as co-founder and CEO of Telecom Technologies, Inc. On September 18, 2006, a few days after her 40th birthday, she became the first Iranian in space. Ansari was the fourth …

Salar Kamangar was born in tehran in 1977 and is a graduate of Stanford University. He is a senior executive at Google and the former CEO of Google’s YouTube brand. Kamangar holds a bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences with honors from Stanford University and was the 9th employee to join Google. He joined after graduating from Stanford in 1998. …

Catherine Lisa Bell is an American actress known for her role in the television show JAG from 1997 to 2005. Currently she stars in the Lifetime Television series Army Wives. Her mother is Iranian and her father Scottish. She originally wanted to become a doctor and studied biology at UCLA. Explaining her journey to become …

Pierre Morad Omidyar is a French-born Iranian American entrepreneur and philanthropist, who is the founder and chairman of the eBay auction site. Omidyar and his wife Pam are well-known philanthropists who founded Omidyar Network in 2004 in order to expand their efforts beyond non-profits to include for-profits and public policy. Growing up in Washington, D.C., …

Mina J. Bissell, Ph.D., is an Iranian American biologist and a world-recognized leader in the area of the role of extracellular matrix (ECM) and microenvironment in regulation of tissue-specific function, with special emphasis on breast cancer. She was born in Tehran, Iran and brought up in a well-educated and well-to-do family. By the time she …

Cyrus Amir-Mokri is the Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions at the U.S. Treasury Department and has lived in the United States since 1981 since his family immigrated from Iran following the 1979 Iranian revolution. After attending Wayland Academy in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin for one year, Amir-Mokri attended Harvard College, graduating in 1986 with a degree …

Cyma Zarghami is an Iranian-American cable television executive currently serving as the president of Nickelodeon and MTV Networks’ Kids & Family Group. Zarghami was born in Abadan, Iran to an Iranian father, Gholam, and a Scottish mother, Catherine. The family later moved to Canada and finally to Englewood, New Jersey, where she graduated in the …

Esfandiar Baharmast is a retired Iranian-American football (soccer) referee best known for supervising two matches during the 1998 FIFA World Cup held in France. At that tournament, he was briefly vilified for giving a controversial late penalty to Norway in the dying minutes of their first-round game with Brazil, only to be vindicated the following …

Born in Tehran at the height of the Iranian Revolution, Ms. Boniadi’s parents relocated to London shortly thereafter. Later she moved to the United States to attend the University of California Irvine where she received her Bachelor’s Degree, with Honors in Biological Sciences. Ms. Boniadi then decided to study acting, which included training in Contemporary …

Shahriar Sadigh Afshar was born in 1971 and is an Iranian-American physicist and a multiple award-winning inventor. He is known for devising and carrying out the Afshar experiment at Harvard University in 2004.Since July 2004, Afshar has been a Visiting Research Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Rowan University. His highest academic degree is B.S. His award-winning invention, KOR-fx, is considered to be the next step towards …

Haleh Esfandiari who was born in 1940 in Iran is an Iranian American academic and the Director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.  Esfandiari earned her Ph.D. at the University of Vienna and her areas of expertise include Middle Eastern women’s issues, contemporary Iranian intellectual currents …

Nouriel Roubini is an American economist and was born in March 29, 1958 in Istanbul, Turkey, to Iranian Jewish parents. When he was an infant, his family lived briefly in Iran and Israel. From 1962 to 1983 he resided in Italy, especially in Milan, where he attended the local Jewish school and then the Bocconi University, earning a B.A. in economics. He received his Ph.D. in international economics from Harvard University in …

Iran Davar Ardalan is the Senior Producer of NPR’s Tell Me More. She was born in San Francisco and has also lived and worked in Iran as a television newscaster for IRIB English News. Ardalan attended elementary and middle school at Iranzamin International School in Tehran and graduated from Brookline High School in Brookline, M.A. She earned …

Touraj Houshmandzadeh was born September 26, 1977 and is an Iranian/American (Houshmandzadeh is of mixed heritage: his mother is African-American and his father Persian) football wide receiver. He was drafted by the Cincinnati Bengals in the seventh round of the 2001 NFL Draft. He played college football at Oregon State. Houshmandzadeh has also played for the Seattle Seahawks in 2009, the Baltimore Ravens in 2010, and the Oakland Raiders in …

Mahnaz Badihian is an American-Iranian poet, who was born in Isfahan/Iran. She is most noted for her use of poetry to bridge the gap between western and eastern cultures. She worked as a dentist for many years in Iowa City and often attended the Iowa Writers Workshop. She currently runs a multilingual (Persian, English, Italian) …

Born in1965 to Iranian parents in London. Faryar has a Bachelor of Science degree in Finance from the University of Maryland; a Master of Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University; and a law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law. He formerly served on the staff of the National Security Council at the White House from March 2003 …

Roxana Saberi is an Iranian-American journalist[1] and former Miss North Dakota pageant winner. She was born in New Jersey/USA on April 26, 1977 from an Iranian father and a Japanese mother. Roxana graduated in 1997 from Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, with degrees in Communication and French. Ms. Saberi was chosen as Miss North Dakota in 1997 and was among the top ten finalists in Miss America 1998. …

Atefeh Riazi, a United States national born in Iran, was appointed as Chief Information Technology Officer, Assistant Secretary-General, Office of Information and Communications Technology, Department of Management by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in May 2013.  Ms. Riazi started her professional career with the Metropolitan Transit Authority of New York City.  During the period of 16 years, …

Shahriar Kamali, known as King Kamali, is an Iranian-American bodybuilder and was born in March 29, 1972 in Tehran, Iran. He is a retired IFBB professional bodybuilder. Nicknamed, famous as “The Persian Pearl” and “The Terminator”, Kamali, now lives in New Jersey and New York City. Kamali has a Bachelor of Science degree in Exercise Physiology from George Mason University. The resulting knowledge about human kinesiology and sport nutrition combined with his distinctive posing …

Firoozeh Dumas is an Iranian-American writer and was born in 1965 in Abadan, Iran. At the age of seven, Dumas and her family moved to Whittier, California. She later moved back to Iran and lived inTehran and Ahvaz. However, she once again immigrated to the United States; first to Whittier, then to Newport Beach, California. Dumas began to write and submit essays to obtain money …

Arash Ferdowsi was born October 7, 1985 and is an Iranian-American entrepreneur. He is co-founder and chief technology officer of Dropbox. Arash graduated from high school in 2004 in Kansas. Ferdowsi attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he dropped out in his last year to focus on his business. Ferdowsi launched Dropbox in June 2007 with his business partner, Drew Houston, at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In September …

Rostam Batmanglij was born on November 28, 1983 to Iranian parents and is an Iranian-American songwriter, composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist of New York-based indie rock band Vampire Weekend and electro-soul group Discovery. Batmanglij grew up in Washington D.C. His mother is the distinguished Persian cookbook author Najmieh Batmanglij while his father is a publisher. His parents are both Iranian and arrived in D.C. in 1983. His brother …