Maryam Qudrat
email:maryam.qudrat@afghanistanworldfoundation.org

Maryam Qudrat is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at the University of Southern California (USC), professor at California State University Long Beach since 2002 and author of a book, titled Torn Between Two Cultures: An Afghan-American Woman Speaks Out. In April 2005, Ms. Qudrat joined the Embassy of Afghanistan in Washington D.C. to serve as an advocate of women’s rights in Afghanistan through higher education. During her tenure, she developed the Social Institutions Department, which continues to serve as the only US-based representation of the Ministries of Higher Education, Women’s Affairs, Public Health and Education. Maryam has created the first of its kind university-level courses on Afghan women and politics that she has begun teaching at American University (AU) in Washington DC (Government and Policy Department). She has been elected Vice President of the American University of Afghanistan Foundation and Vice Chair of the National Advisory Council on South Asian Affairs, which represents issues related to Afghanistan and South Asian countries collectively to the State Department. She is a fellow of the Foreign Policy Association and is working in 2007 on an MS program to strengthen the system of Higher Education in Afghanistan with the first Afghan-American to become President of a university in the US. It is an MS for Higher Education Leadership and Management geared towards the leadership structure in Afghanistan’s higher education.