01:21
Parisa Rouhani Highlight
Just because it hasn’t been done before doesn’t mean it can’t be done.
About Parisa
- I immigrated to the United States from Iran with my family when I was 2 years old and settled in Arizona.
- We moved to Brazil for a couple of years for my mother’s job and came back to Arizona when I was 8 years old.
- My elementary school wrongly assumed that I should be placed in an ESL class because I had lived in Brazil—through that experience, I learned early on that I couldn’t let others make decisions for me.
- We moved many times while I was in school, which gave me a lot of practice navigating different types of systems so that I was better able to figure out what types of experiences I wanted.
- I went to college to pursue engineering because it was interesting and new to me, but I realized I hated it and wouldn’t be happy in that type of job, so I switched to management information systems.
- I joined the workforce and realized that I still wasn’t as happy in my work as I wanted to be—my job dealt with how things work and I was more interested in how people learn—so I went back to school.
- I earned a master’s degree in technology, innovation, and education as well as a doctorate in developmental science from Harvard University.
- I co-founded Populace, a think tank focused on imagining and creating a culture where individuality is the norm.
