Mariam Memarsadeghi

Mariam Memarsadeghi
Born	February 14, 1972 Tehran, Iran
Institutions	Tavaana: E-Learning Institute for Iranian Civil Society
Known for	Democracy and human rights advocacy

Mariam Memarsadeghi (Persian: مریم معمارصادقی ) is an Iranian-American democracy and human rights advocate who is co-founder and co-director of Tavaana: E-Learning Institute for Iranian Civil Society.

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.

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.

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