I'm Parisa.

Parisa Pirooz is a TEDx speaker, daughter of immigrants, and founder of Creshendo, a nonprofit advancing migrant-led systems change. Her work explores one question: What happens when the people closest to the consequences are brought closer to the decisions?

Her career has taken her from studying women's movements during a semester at the University of Oxford to working alongside refugee communities in Jordan, supporting immigrant survivors through Harvard Law School's Legal Aid Clinic, and serving on the U.S. federal response supporting Afghan families after the fall of Kabul. Across every setting, she encountered the same pattern. The people with the deepest understanding of a problem were often the furthest from the decisions shaping their futures.

She founded Creshendo to help change that. Today the organization works with volunteers and partners across more than 15 countries to build migrant-led approaches to storytelling, integration, leadership, and economic mobility.

Parisa speaks internationally on systems change, lived experience as expertise, co-creation, leadership, migration, and designing institutions that share power with the people they serve.