Agenda
9:00 AM – 9:45 AM : Registration and Breakfast
9:45 AM – 10:00 AM : Opening Remarks
Narges Baniasadi | ISPS Organizing Committee
10:00 AM – 10:30 AM : Keynote Speech
Howard Wolf | President of the Stanford Alumni Association and VP for Alumni Affairs
10:30 AM – 12:00 PM : Our Community
Our speakers in this session will discuss the importance of our community and the ways we can be more engaged and contribute
Cyrus Habib | Lieutenant Governor of Washington
Pirooz Parvarandeh | Founder of IACP, COO of Aquantia
Leila Zia | Senior Research Scientist at Wikimedia Foundation
Sam Alavi | Senior Development Analyst at UC Davis
Moderator: Lily Sarafan
12:00 AM – 1:00 PM : Lunch, Networking, and Mentorship Lounge
1:00 PM – 1:15 PM : Food for Thought
Hanif Sadr | Founder at Komaaj
1:15 PM – 2:30 PM : Design Lab: Grassroots Communal Values
During this session, we are going to have a discussion and define the priorities and values of our community together. We are going to discuss how we can realize the potential of our community and act on our priorities.
2:30 PM – 2:45 PM : Coffee Break
2:45 PM – 4:15 PM : Our Impact
Our speakers in this session will discuss examples of the local and global impact of our community and inspire us to go beyond the status quo and make an impact
Nahal Iravani-Sani | Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge
Mohsen Moazami | Founder and Managing Director at CNTP
Parisa Khosravi | Former News Executive at CNN
Yahya Tabesh | Founder at Polyup
Moderator: Shima Alizadeh
4:15 PM – 4:30 PM : Closing Remarks
Mehrdad Yousefzadeh | ISPS Organizing Committee
4:30 PM – 5:30 PM : Networking
Speaker Biographies
Keynote Speaker
Howard Wolf | President of the Stanford Alumni Association and VP for Alumni Affairs
Howard Wolf, who has led the Stanford Alumni Association and its staff since 2001, earned his bachelor’s degree in psychology, with distinction, from Stanford in 1980 and his MBA from Harvard in1985. Before his appointment as Vice President for Alumni Affairs and President, Stanford Alumni Association, he worked as both an entrepreneur and business manager in the publishing and commercial real estate development and management industries. An active alum and volunteer, as well as an avid Stanford athletics fan, he received the Stanford Associates Outstanding Achievement Award in 2000. In addition to his Alumni Association role, Howard is one of eight officers of the University and part of its senior management team, with particular responsibility for advising the University’s President and the Provost on alumni affairs.
Our Community
Sam Alavi | Senior Development Analyst at UC Davis
Sam Alavi is a graduate of Stanford’s Policy, Organization, and Leadership studies MA program in the Graduate School of Education and currently works as a Senior Development Analyst at UC Davis working to build a $230 million annual revenue to support the university’s research and educational endeavors. Most recently, Sam served as the director of Iranian Alliances Across Borders’ (IAAB) Summer Leadership Institute, an international program for young members of the Iranian diaspora. She has been involved in IAAB for over 7 years. Sam also has a background in racial and gender justice work with national nonprofits, institutions of higher education, and the Obama administration.
Cyrus Habib | Lieutenant Governor of Washington
Cyrus Habib was elected Washington State’s 16th Lt. Governor in November 2016 at the age of 35. A former legislator, Lt. Governor Habib represented east King County in both the State House of Representatives and the State Senate, where he served as Democratic Whip and a member of the Democratic leadership team.
As Lt. Governor, he is President of the State Senate, serves as acting-Governor whenever Governor Inslee leaves the state, and maintains a portfolio of key issues including Economic Development, Trade, and Higher Education.
A three-time cancer survivor, Lieutenant Governor Habib has been fully blind since age eight. His parents immigrated to the U.S. from Iran before he was born, and he is the first and only Iranian-American official to hold statewide elected office in the United States. He is the youngest presiding officer in the country, and has been recognized as a political rising star by multiple publications including the Washington Post and Governing Magazine. He is a graduate of Columbia University, Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, and Yale Law School. An attorney by trade, Lt. Governor Habib practiced law at Perkins Coie and since 2013 has served as Professor and Distinguished Lawmaker in Residence at Seattle University Law School. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Pirooz Parvarandeh | Founder of IACP, COO of Aquantia
Pirooz Parvarandeh is the Chief Operating Officer of Aquantia Inc. where he oversees Product Development, and Manufacturing Operations. Previously, he has served as CTO and Group President at Maxim integrated. He has over 30 years of experience in the semiconductor industry. He has invested in and advised multiple start-up companies in a broad set of technology domains. He has approximately 30 issued or pending patents, and holds BSEE and MSEE degrees from the California Institute of Technology. In 2016, he founded a non-profit organization called the Iranian Americans’ Contributions Project (IACP).
Leila Zia | Senior Research Scientist at Wikimedia Foundation
Leila Zia is a Senior Research Scientist and Technical Lead of the Research team at the Wikimedia Foundation. Her research interest include quantifying and addressing the gaps of knowledge in Wikipedia, understanding Wikipedia’s readers, and contributor diversity on Wikimedia projects. In her spare time, she contributes to Wikipedia as a volunteer. Leila holds a PhD and a MSc degree from Stanford University’s Management Science and Engineering department, a MSc degree from Rutgers University, and a BSc degree from Sharif University of Technology.
Our Impact
Nahal Iravani-Sani | Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge
Nahal Iravani-Sani is a Superior Court Judge presiding in Santa Clara County, California. Prior to joining the bench, she was a Deputy District Attorney for 22 years. Judge Iravani-Sani earned her Bachelor of Arts in 1990 from the University of California, Irvine in Social Ecology, with an emphasis in Criminology and Legal Studies. She earned her Juris Doctor from Santa Clara University School of Law in 1993.
Dedicated to education and mentorship, Judge Iravani-Sani instructed Trial Advocacy at Stanford Law School and Santa Clara University School of Law. As an immigrant to the United States at a young age, Judge Iravani-Sani is passionate about her role as an ambassador of the Iranian-American community, and giving back to her adopted country. She has served in leadership positions on nonprofit community and professional organizations, including the boards of the Iranian American Bar Association (IABA), Pars Equality Center, and the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans (PAAIA).
Judge Iravani-Sani has been the recipient of the Unity Award by the San Francisco Minority Bar Coalition and the Distinguished Service Award by the Iranian American Bar Association. In 2016, she was the recipient of the Judge’s Night Diversity Award by the Santa Clara County Bar Association for her commitment and leadership in promoting diversity in the legal profession. In 2017, California Governor Edmund G. Brown appointed Hon. Iravani-Sani as the first Iranian-American judge ever to serve on the Santa Clara County Superior Court.
Parisa Khosravi | President at Payam Global Strategies
Parisa is a keynote speaker, a strategic adviser, and a multi-award-winning veteran journalist and news executive. With over three decades of experience on the global stage, Parisa has first-hand experience dealing with world leaders, dignitaries, and high-ranking officials across the globe in order to open doors to difficult and dangerous parts of the world where freedom of speech is in no way guaranteed.
Parisa speaks on the topic of compassionate leadership to audiences across private and public sectors. Parisa is an advocate for individuals with autism and has focused her efforts in helping the “silent champions” like her son. Parisa’s joy and passion both in her career as a journalist and as a mother to her special son is to help give voice to the voiceless. She leads with empathy, compassion and integrity earning her the nickname of “Mother Parisa”.
Throughout her career as senior vice president for international news gathering, national news gathering and global relations for CNN Worldwide, Parisa directed historic coverage of countless award-winning news stories such as the fall of East Bloc, the Rwandan genocide, the earthquake in Haiti and the Arab Spring. Parisa left CNN in 2015. Parisa has spoken about compassionate leadership at NASA, United Nations, Delta Airlines and numerous other private and public organizations and companies.
Mohsen Moazami | Founder and Managing Director at CNTP
Mohsen Moazami is the Founder and Managing Director at Columbus Nova Technology Partners a novel global tech investment firm combining the best attributes of VC and PE business models.
Previously, Moazami was a member of the Cisco executive staff from 2000-2011. Most recently he was on the Sr. leadership teams of the Emerging Markets & Globalization Centre. Moazami also led Cisco’s Strategic Consulting across EM. Moazami and his team worked with senior government and business leaders to help drive digital broadband based country transformation, improve national competitiveness, and standard of living. Moazami was a member of the Investment Advisory Council of the Turkish Prime Minister and served as a member of the Strategy Council of the Global Alliance for ICT and the Development of the UN Department of Economic & Social Affairs.
Before joining Cisco, Moazami was a managing partner at Kurt Salmon Associates (a division of Accenture). Prior to KSA, Moazami founded and oversaw the growth of Stanford Business Systems, a software & systems integration firm acquired by KSA a division of Accenture. Moazami received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor for outstanding achievement and noteworthy U.S. citizenship. Moazami has a graduate degree from Stanford University. Moazami has been regularly featured on Bloomberg, CNBC, WSJ, FT, & WEF.
Yahya Tabesh | Founder at Polyup
Yahya Tabesh spent 30+ years as a distinguished faculty at Sharif University and was the director of Math and Computer Olympiads for many years. A pioneer of developing math house and schoolnet, and a member of the high council of education reform in Iran he was responsible for developing mathematics textbooks and curriculum for high schools.
Most recently, he cofounded Poly-up a computational thinking playground, which was conceived at Stanford. He won the Erdős international award in 2010 for his sustained and distinguished contribution to the enrichment of math and computer education.
Hanif Sadr | Founder at Komaaj
Born in Paris and raised in Tehran, Hanif immigrated to the US for graduate studies in material engineering in 2012. But a chance encounter (a temporary cooking job at Golestankids) changed the course of his life, driving him away from engineering and pulling him into the kitchen, an experience that led to him founding Komaaj foor group, a pop-up restaurant based in Berkeley, California. Komaaj has hosted over 200 pop-ups with the goal of building a cultural bridge and forming communities through food, in one of the most critical Times.
Iranian Stanford Professional Symposium 