Welcome To Zasha

Dr. Sousan Abadian is an Iranian-born scholar and serves as the Executive Director of the Interfaith Council of Metropolitan Washington. She earned a Ph.D. in Political Economy and Government from Harvard University, an M.A. in the Anthropology of Social Change and Development, also from Harvard, as well as an M.P.A. in International Development from Harvard’s Kennedy School. She has authored Generative Cultural Renewal: An Effective Resource in Ending Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting & Other Harmful Practices (Waterside, Oct 2022) which offers ethical and culturally-sensitive means of evolving harmful traditional practices, often justified on religious grounds. In 2022, she was a Fulbright Scholar in the Specialist Program in Canada consulting with First Nations on International Baccalaureate curriculum, “Indigenous perspectives in a changing world” and has an expertise in “non-Abrahamic” worldview.  Her earlier research on healing the effects of long-standing collective trauma and cultural damage to Indigenous communities – influenced in part by religious narratives – was described by Nobel laureate in economics Amartya Sen as “pioneering” and “highly original.” Between June 2017 to June 2019, Dr. Abadian served as a Franklin Fellow at the U.S. State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. Her portfolio included preventing violent extremism, rights of religious minorities in the Middle East and South Asia, gender-based violence, and cultural restoration following atrocities. Dr. Abadian also teaches and consults internationally on leadership development, building on her earlier work with Cambridge Leadership Associates facilitating workshops and speaking on Adaptive Leadership. She has also served as a Fellow at M.I.T.’s Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values as well as at Harvard’s Center for Public Leadership.