Greetings!

This August, the ILA will offer the Leadership Education Academy (LEA) for the fourth time. I am honored and fortunate to be a new member of LEA’s global, experienced, and diverse group of facilitators. I join this group with a unique combination of academic, organizational, and community practice experience. As an organizational leadership consultant, my clients consist of multinational corporations, government agencies, universities, and international NGOs. Throughout my career, I have had the opportunity to design and deliver leadership development programs as well as diversity and inclusion initiatives for organizations in different countries and across many different cultures.

My early career started around 20 years ago as a food science and technology engineer working at a national research institute in Iran. Soon after I entered the workforce, I realized that the food and nutrition sector was a woman-dominated field, but the voice of women in leadership was clearly missing. Women would barely be recognized in higher level decision-making roles. I started immersing myself in learning about leadership and how, as a young scientist, I could change the status quo. That was the turning point in my personal and professional life — when I transitioned to be a leadership educator.

Over the past 10 years, I pursued a doctorate in Organizational Leadership and have been designing and delivering leadership programs in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. I have been intentional in combining my passion and experience to deepen the conversation around cultural understanding, inclusive workplace, racial justice, women empowerment, and personal and social identity and how they connect to leadership. I am committed to finding my voice as a woman of color and as a leader, as well as empowering those whose voices are not being heard and recognized enough in the workforce and in society.

I currently serve as a Leadership Solution Facilitator at the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) based out of the San Diego campus. I facilitate open enrollment as well as customized solutions for organizations focusing on developing self-awareness, leadership and organizational change, women empowerment, group relations, conflict management, and diversity and inclusion. I also serve as faculty and executive coach at RISE San Diego Urban Leadership Fellows Program. RISE’s unique goal and commitment is to identify and empower a generation of leaders who will not only bring our urban communities up but also bring them together. I am also an adjunct professor at Pepperdine Graduate School of Education and Psychology where I teach a doctoral course on Personal Leadership, Ethics, and Social Justice.

I applied to be an LEA facilitator for the 2020 academy hoping to share some of my global and practical perspectives and, more importantly, to co-create and engage in a deeper learning experience with my colleagues and participants. So far, I am fascinated by my colleagues’ intentionality, work ethics, and collaborative spirit.

I am writing this piece to introduce myself to you all after the world has spent more than a year dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. It makes me pause and reflect on how, together, we can incorporate reflective learning and Adaptive Leadership as a fundamental aspect of what we practice at LEA. I realize it is a time when “I” needs to shift to “We.” As this public health crisis continues to unfold, people have and are suffering from the circumstances and are adapting to new norms and behaviors. Those of us in education likely experienced a transition to online teaching. Globally, the world seems to be extremely fragile and powerless in the face of crises such as the pandemic. I believe we collectively have the potential, power, and opportunity to make sense of crises like this and be part of a global shift.

As part of the LEA community, I am hoping that we can reflect on how we can be and how we can effectively perform in the space of not knowing. Given the Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity of the current time, how can we be more prepared for the challenges a VUCA world holds in store? How do we hold safe space for ourselves, for our neighbors, families, colleagues, and students as we go through challenging times? How do we respond?

The COVID-19 pandemic illustrates that we, as individuals and collectives, can no longer operate the same way as before. We have to pay more attention to what is actually happening every moment. Change is the only constant factor. The pandemic created a situation that has many different interconnected parts and variables that are unknown. Issues of public health, racial justice, financial instability, emotional distress, and educational accessibility are unexpected and unstable. We are not capable of predicting what exactly is about to happen in the future. For many, this brings a sense of anxiety and powerlessness. I wanted to share some of my thoughts as I reflect on the past year:

We are globally united. This time more than ever! It may be under a very painful circumstance, yet no matter where we live in the world, no matter any borders and boundaries, any climate, any language we speak, or any religion we practice, we feel the same pain; we seek the same solution. It is a call for us to transcend from “us” versus “others” and embrace oneness and unity. This past year taught many of us to see the darkness of racism and discrimination and showed us how ugly that it. As we strive to recover from the pandemic, we must find ways to build a renewed social construct based on inclusivity and sustainability.