Manizha Naderi (ex officio), WAW executive director, was born in Kabul, Afghanistan and raised in New York and New Jersey. She has a BA in English Language Arts from Hunter College. While she has roots in the Afghan community in Queens, NY, she and her family now divide their time between NYC and Kabul.

Belquis Ahmadi has been an advocate for Afghan women’s rights since the early 1990s, when she helped found the Afghan Women’s Network in Kabul. She has served in many different capacities over the years, and has authored numerous articles and reports on human rights in Afghanistan. Until recently, She was a senior human rights advisor with USAID-Afghanistan Rule of Law Project. She currently heads ARoLP’s Women’s Rights under Islam Program, the aim of which is to enable Afghan women and men to understand and think critically about the customs, traditions and practices that are discriminatory toward women but are justified by using narrow and repressive interpretations of Islamic rules and norms. Belquis was political and legal advisor for Democracy International during the 2009 Presidential and Parliamentary elections in Afghanistan.

Zuhra Bahman is the CEO of Kabul-based research and training company Inteqal LLC. During the Taliban period, Zuhra taught at an underground girls’ school in Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan.  In 2000 she immigrated to the UK where she studied for a degree in anthropology and law at the London School of Economics and Political Science and an MA in Conflict, Security and Development at King’s College London.  She also built a career in the area of promotion of the rights of the child as she worked for a variety of UK charities and founded the Afghan Youth Fund. She has worked for many prestigious institutions including: British Red Cross; STAR, a nationwide advocacy network; and ECPAT UK, an international anti-trafficking NGO.During her time away from Afghanistan, Zuhra maintained close involvement in the current affairs of her home country. She headed the Afghan Youth Fund and she was the youngest person to participate in and address the historical Bonn Conference on Afghanistan in 2001.  Zuhra has co-edited two books on the rights of the child and has taught at several universities.   In her free time, Zuhra likes to read literary novels. She has set herself a challenge to read a book from every single country of the world. Zuhra is married and has one daughter.

Esther Hyneman spent her professional life teaching English and American literature, Women's Studies, Gender Studies, and multicultural literatures at the Brooklyn Campus of Long Island University. For over 25 years, she was an officer in the LIU faculty union (LIUFF), one of the strongest unions in higher education in America. In that capacity, she fought for faculty rights and was a leader of several successful faculty strikes. She retired from the classroom in 2001 to devote herself to humanitarian work and human rights advocacy for women and girls.  She is the principal grant writer for the organization.

Sherry (Shirin) Shokouhi is a licensed mental health counselor as well as a credentialed alcoholism and substance abuse counselor, with a Masters degree in clinical psychology. Her counseling experience includes helping a wide range of clients, including children, adolescents, adults, couples, and families in a variety of challenging situations. She has worked as a clinician at non-profit organizations and public schools, providing mental health services to disadvantaged Asian immigrant populations in NYC, with a particular focus on Afghan women and children. She is fluent in English and Farsi/Dari.
 

Masuda Sultan has been working on the economic and political empowerment of Afghan women through a variety of roles over the last four years. She serves on the advisory board of the Business Council for Peace, an organization that helps women build sustainable businesses in post-conflict countries. She is a member of the Women Waging Peace network and co-authored the report on Afghanistan, "From Rhetoric to Reality: Afghan Women on the Agenda for Peace." Ms. Sultan produced and narrated "From Ground Zero to Ground Zero," the first documentary on Afghan civilian casualties to air on US television, later shown in Europe and Japan. She is a contributing author to Women for Afghan Women: Shattering Myths and Claiming the Future and author of My War At Home. She recently completed her Master's in Public Administration at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Masuda lives in Afghanistan and is working as an advisor to the Ministry of Finance.

Sunita Viswanath is co-founder and board member of Women for Afghan Women and editor of Women for Afghan Women: Shattering Myths and Claiming the Future, Palgrave/St. Martins Press (October 2002). Sunita worked for many years as director of grants and programs at The Sister Fund, where WAW was founded and incubated. From 2006 to 2009, Sunita was executive director of Funders Concerned About AIDS. Sunita now volunteers full-time for WAW.  Sunita was a 2011 recipient of the Feminist Majority Foundation's Global Women's Rights Award for her work with WAW. In 2011, she cofounded another grassroots organization, Sadhana: Coalition of Progressive Hindus.  She lives in Brooklyn, NY, with her husband Stephan Shaw and their three sons: Gautama, Akash, and Satya.