Speaker Series

The Tale of a Success

Inspiring talks by Iranian-Americans about their professional life journeys.

  • Prof. Hashem Pesaran

  • Dr. Narges Baniasadi

  • Keyvan Mohajer

  • Ali Ghodsi

  • Lili Sarafan

  • Abdi Soltani

  • Dr. Abbas Ardehali

  • Pezhman Nozad

Ali Ghodsi is the CEO and co-founder of Databricks, responsible for the growth and international expansion of the company. He previously served as the VP of Engineering and Product Management before taking the role of CEO in January 2016. In addition to his work at Databricks, Ali serves as an adjunct professor at UC Berkeley and is on the board at UC Berkeley’s RiseLab. Ali was one of the original creators of open source project, Apache Spark, and the ideas from his academic research in resource management and scheduling and data caching have been applied to Apache Mesos and Apache Hadoop. Ali received his MBA from Mid-Sweden University in 2003 and PhD from KTH/Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden in 2006 in the area of Distributed Computing.

The Tale of a Success with Ali Ghodsi

The Tale of a Success with Keyvan Mohajer

Keyvan is the Founder and CEO of SoundHound, an audio and speech recognition company that develops voice recognition, natural language understanding, sound recognition, and search technologies. SoundHound's Houndify Voice-AI Platform powers products by prominent companies around the globe, including Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai, KIA, Pandora, Mastercard, Deutsche Telekom, Snap, VIZIO, and Stellantis. Before SoundHound, Keyvan founded several companies starting at the age of 19. Keyvan has a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Toronto and a Master's and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

The Tale of a Success with Dr. Narges Baniasadi

Dr. Narges Baniasadi has led multiple initiatives and businesses in the intersection of Technology and Life Sciences for more than a decade. She founded Bina, a pioneering Bioinformatics company, out of a decade of research at Stanford and UC Berkeley. Bina developed high-performance computing platforms and AI solutions for cancer research and genomics analysis. Later, upon acquisition of Bina by Roche, she led the clinical software development and AI research as VP of Informatics at Roche Sequencing. Currently, she is working with multiple Universities and entrepreneurial platforms across the globe to support mission-driven businesses. Narges is currently the Founder and Executive Director of the Emergence program and serves as an Adjunct Faculty at Stanford University. Narges graduated from the University of Tehran with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering and continued her studies at Stanford where she received her Masters and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering.

The Tale of a Success with Prof. Hashem Pesaran

Prof. Pesaran was born in Shiraz, Iran. He received his school diploma from Nemazi School in Shiraz and left for England for further studies on a scholarship from Bank Markazi Iran in November 1964. He received his BSc (First Class Honours) in Economics, Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Salford (England) and his PhD in Economics at Cambridge University. Currently, he is an emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Cambridge, the John Elliot Distinguished Chair in Economics at the University of Southern California, and a Professorial Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Previously, he was head of the Economic Research Department of the Central Bank of Iran (1974-76) and the Under-Secretary of the Ministry of Education (1976-78), Iran. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, a Fellow of the Econometric Society, and a Fellow of the Journal of Econometrics. He was awarded Honorary Doctorates by the University of Salford in 1993, the University of Goethe, Frankfurt in 2008, Maastricht University in 2013, and the University of Economics Prague in 2016.

The Tale of a Success with Pejman Nozad

Pejman is the Founding Managing Partner at Pear VC, one of the most successful early-stage Venture Capital firms in Tech. With over 20 years of experience investing in early-stage high tech start-ups, Pejman has been named by Forbes as "one of the most successful angel investors", with a portfolio exceeding $150B. To honor the road he traveled as an immigrant, he was the recipient of a 2014 Ellis Island Medal of Honor Award. Among other distinctions, Worth Magazine named him one of the most powerful players in tech, a distinction which put him in the company of Marc Andreessen, Marissa Mayer, Doug Leone, John Doerr, and Mary Meeker.

The Tale of a Success with Lily Sarafan

Lily is the co-founder and Executive Chair of Home Care Assistance (HCA), where she served as chief executive through December 2020 and led the company from startup to industry leader with 10,000+ employees. She is also a board director with Instacart, Thumbtack, and Kyo. Lily serves on the Stanford University Board of Trustees, Freeman Spogli Institute Council, Undergraduate Cabinet, and Life Sciences Council. She is the Founding Partner of Project BIG: The Brain Immune Gut Initiative and an appointed member of the California Governor's Alzheimer's Task Force. Lily also serves in various leadership roles to advance precision health, economic development, and informed civic engagement. Lily holds M.S. and B.S. degrees from Stanford University. She has been named Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, Women Health Care Executives Woman of the Year, and a 2020 Fortune 40 Under 40. Lily is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute, and a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader.

The Tale of a Success with Abdi Soltani

Abdi has been executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Northern California since 2009. He is a nationally-recognized civil rights leader who has dedicated his adult life to social justice and equal treatment for all. As executive director, his fight for civil liberties has been expansive and inclusive of racial, gender, and economic justice. He has deepened ACLU’s partnerships with communities most directly impacted by injustice and disparities. Under his leadership, the ACLU has a stronger presence in the Central Valley and at the State Capitol. This expansion has enabled the ACLU to defend and advance the civil liberties of all Californians and to mobilize our communities as a collective voice for fairness and equity. Abdi is also a Levi Strauss Foundation Pioneer in Justice Fellow, and he is actively involved in the Iranian American community.

Dr. Ardehali is the William E. Connor Chair in Cardiothoracic Transplantation, and a Professor of Surgery and Medicine at UCLA School of Medicine, Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery, the largest lung transplant program on the west coast. Prof. Ardehali was involved in developing technology that allows for transporting a breathing human heart or lung for an extended period of time and the first surgeon in the US to perform a 'breathing lung' transplant. Prof. Ardehali has received several awards for his work including the Ellis Island Medal of Honor by the National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations in 2017. Prof. Ardehali has been a faculty member at UCLA since 1997, chief of cardiothoracic surgery at West Los Angeles Veterans Hospital from 1998 to 2012, has authored numerous book chapters and more than 100 peer-reviewed manuscripts and abstracts, and also co-authored a textbook, “Khonsari’s Cardiac Surgery: Safeguards and Pitfalls in Operative Technique”. Prof. Ardehali has been interviewed by ABC News, the Associated Press, CNN, Fox News, NBC News, CBS News, "The Doctor's Show," and Al Jazeera America.

The Tale of a Success with Dr. Abbas Ardehali