Yara Leadership Society

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Yara Leadership Society

Yara Leadership Society is committed to identifying and celebrating Iranian-Canadian women leaders and providing a platform to advance Iranian-Canadian women.

Yara engages both women and men in the pursuit of its vision: lead together, strong together.

10/13/2026

If you are a lawyer of Iranian heritage practicing for 3 to 12years in Ontario and you are interested to hear from senior leaders in the Iranian Canadian legal community on how to earn a seat at the table as a trusted advisor, join Yara Leadership Society for this in-person event on October 20th.

Sahar Talebi will moderate a thought-provoking panel discussion with Roxana Tavana, Mohsen Seddigh, Parna Sabet-Stephenson and David Mousavi.

Following the panel, attendees will participate in round table discussions with Sam Hosseini, Leila Rafi, Ahmad Mozaffari, Marjan Delavar, Ardy Mohajer, Nilou Nezhat, Justin Nasseri and Mack Hosseinian.

✨Yara is grateful to Stikeman Elliott LLP and Gardiner Roberts LLP for sponsoring this event.

✨To register, please connect with Atoosa Mahdavian / Rojin Jazayeri OR contact: [email protected]

✨Limited capacity. Registration is first come/first serve.

10/09/2026

Saba Balchi, 24 who goes by “Saade”, made history on NBC's The Voice this season as the first Iranian immigrant to compete on the show.

Born in Iran, Saade discovered music in a country women/girls are banned from singing publicly so she took up the violin. After immigrating to the US at 12, she used music to preserve her Iranian identity while helping her parents who spoke no English navigate their lives. Ambitious across every part of her life, Saade became a registered dental assistant and now co-owns a digital dental laboratory while continuing to create jazz and alternative music.

As a child in Iran, Saade used a VPN and waited nearly 30 minutes just to watch The Voice. In a full-circle moment, she stood on stage on Sept.28 - free to sing, representing Iranian women and honouring her family’s sacrifices. Singing RAYE's "Oscar-Winning Tears" on the blind auditions, Saade earned a 3-chair turn and a spot on Team Kelly Clarkson.

Watch her audition breakdown and updates on the NBC Insider Feature Page - https://lnkd.in/gJEs2ANp!

10/06/2026

October is Small Business Month in Canada and we want to celebrate Iranian Canadian business owners whose stories of grit and resilience will inspire us. Nominate an Iranian Canadian small business or entrepreneur who work hard every day to uplift our community and neighbourhoods.

👉 To nominate, use the form (https://tinyurl.com/YaraSBM) or Comment/Share - tell us why the business/entrepreneur should be recognized.

✔️ Eligibility: Iranian‑Canadian owned, business registered in Canada, operating for at least one year with less than 100 paid employees.

⌛ Nomination Deadline: October 23, 2026

⭐ We will feature selected nominees, and your nomination can help bring well‑deserved attention to a local business.

09/30/2026

Reconciliation starts with confronting the truth. It isn’t a single day on the calendar—it is an ongoing commitment to uncovering past and present truths, listening, learning, and doing better.

09/23/2026

The 2026 WXN Media Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100™ includes four Iranians in the AI and Technology category. Yara proudly congratulates this year’s honourees:

Dr. Maryam Haghighi, Ph.D. - Director at the Bank of Canada, leading enterprise AI strategy and platforms that turn emerging technologies into institutional capability. A global voice in AI and quantum, she shapes international agendas through G7 and central bank collaborations. With a PhD in Mathematics and a Chartered Director designation, she bridges technical excellence, governance, and strategic leadership.

Shahrzad Rafati - Founder and CEO of RHEI (formerly BBTV), an AI technology company powering human creativity. RHEI reaches 600M+ monthly viewers across 150+ countries and pioneered Made, the first emotionally intelligent platform for creators. She partners with major global clients including Sony, Warner, Paramount, Google, and Meta, and serves as G20 EMPOWER Co‑Chair with board roles at G7 GEAC, Invest in Canada, Hootsuite, and BIG.

Dr. Nazanin Esmaili, Ph.D. - VP, Enterprise AI and Data Centre of Excellence at Metrolinx. She leads AI, data, analytics, governance, and platform capabilities that drive responsible, data‑driven decision‑making. Known for building and scaling AI programs across public and private sectors, she translates emerging technologies into measurable business value.

Dr. Bahar Sateli, Ph.D. - Partner at PwC Canada and a leader in AI and advanced analytics. With experience across industry, academia, entrepreneurship, and research, she brings deep technical expertise to enterprise AI solutions. She advises executives on AI strategy, leads high‑performing teams, champions innovation, and mentors women in tech. She is recognized nationally and globally for her leadership in Responsible AI, with distinctions from Forbes and other major organizations.

09/16/2026

Fresh off her historic Best Actress win in Venice International Film Festival Orizzonti section, Laleh Marzban used her festival speech to honour the courage of Iranian women—turning her moment into a tribute to those who continue to fight for dignity and justice.

On the 4th anniversary of Jina Mahsa Amini’s death, we are still saying her name. She remains a symbol of resistance and a source of inspiration in the ongoing fight by women for freedom and equality. 💚 🤍 ❤️

09/15/2026

Among the 14 authors whose work has been longlisted for the 2026 Giller Prize are two Iranian Canadians, Hollay Ghadery and Nazanine Hozar. The $100,000 award annually recognizes the best in Canadian fiction.

In The Unravelling of Ou by Hollay Ghadery, Minoo has to decide between her constant companion, a sock puppet named Ecology Paul, and her relationships with her daughter and newborn granddaughter. On the way home from the hospital, Ecology Paul tells how Minoo got to this point. It's the story of a young Iranian woman exiled to Canada due to teen pregnancy who finds solace in a sock puppet that helps her feel seen. Hollay Ghadary, the mother of four, is a multi-genre writer living in rural Ontario on Anishinaabe land. Her acclaimed memoir, Fuse about mixed-race identity and mental illness won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir.

The Small Ones by Nazanine Hozar, is a novel about a group of boys and one small girl who are forced to become soldiers in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. The ragtag bunch find friendship and community in each other, even as they desperately hope to return home and back to safety. Nazanine wrote her debut novel, Aria while pursuing her MFA in creative writing at UBC. In 2020 Aria was shortlisted for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award and Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. She lives in Vancouver and teaches at Simon Fraser University.

Yara congratulates both Hollay and Nazanine on making the for . The 2026 shortlist will be announced on Oct5, and the winner will be announced on Nov16.

📚 The Unravelling of Ou by , published by
📚 The Small Ones by , published by

09/09/2026

This year at the Toronto International Film Festival, Iranian cinema enjoys an expanded, powerful presence across multiple programs, spanning satirical fiction, profound documentaries, and avant-garde essay films including the following films/directors:

🎞️ Rehearsals for a Revolution by Pegah Ahangarani
🎞️ Trees are Watching by Bahman Ghobadi
🎞️ Tehran, Under the Skin by Afsaneh Salari
🎞️ Ghazal-e Sorkh by Maryam Tafakory
🎞️ Peacocks Come with the Clouds by Parastoo Anoushahpour
🎞️ Head to Head by Ghasideh Golmakani
🎞️ A Sweet Day by Omid Abdollahi

For schedule info & tickets to , please visit: tiff.net

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09/03/2026

Yara congratulates architect and academic, Bita Azimi who, by order of the Minister of Culture in France, been appointed Director of the Ecole nationale supérieure d'architecture de Versailles (ENSA), effective September 7, 2026. Born in Iran, Ms. Azimi graduated from ENSA Montpellier in 1996 and began teaching in 2011 and became a tenured associate professor in 2016 in ENSA Versailles. For Bita Azimi, architecture is a discipline shaped by a "project culture"—understood as a way of interpreting territories, questioning structures (whether built, landscape-based, or infrastructural), and understanding their role in how we inhabit space.

In 2002, Ms. Azimi co-founded CAB ARCHITECTES . Following an initial series of projects in the south of France, one of which was La Trinité Early Childhood Center, winner of the 2012 Équerre d’Argent award, the firm relocated to Paris in 2013. Drawing on a dual French-Iranian background, Bita Azimi develops work focused on infrastructure and territorial structures, and on their capacity to reveal or transform landscapes. Her frequent travels to Iran and India shaped both her teaching and her practice, infusing the seminars, workshops, and masterclasses she leads.

08/27/2026

Safoura Zahedi is a Toronto-based, award-winning architect, artist, and design educator with experience on projects in Canada and internationally. Her work sits at the intersection of art and architecture, exploring as a universal language of unity by merging traditional analogue design methods with contemporary technology and digital fabrication.

Born in Japan to Iranian parents, she was raised between Tehran and Toronto. Her father, an engineer building hospitals near war zones, moved the family to Japan during a difficult post-war period in Iran. Her mother, an artist and graphic designer, shaped the visual language Zahedi later sought to understand more deeply.

Her interests in Islamic geometry led her on a year-long journey across the Muslim world to expand her expertise through exposure to places, perspectives, and techniques often overlooked in Western architectural discourse. In 2022/2023, she stepped away from corporate practice as she became increasingly aware of how Eurocentric the field felt and how little Islamic heritage appeared around her. She travelled to 17 countries and 40 cities studying geometric arts, training with master geometers, and photographing what she saw for her archive, “365 Days of Geometry.” The further she travelled, the more clearly she saw how evolved across regions while carrying the same philosophical core—Morocco’s fourfold geometries shaped by plaster carving and zellij; Iran and Central Asia’s mathematically complex fivefold and tenfold systems; India’s geometry softened by floral motifs from Hindu and Buddhist traditions. As she noted in a Scene Traveller interview, “every part of our universe is connected to a whole, and the whole is connected to every part.”

Learn more at www.safourazahedi.com &

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http://www.yarasociety.com/

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