Ansari Fellowship Program Announces Summer Fellow, Safa Ansari-Bayegan

Washington, DC – The Ansari Fellowship Program, a PAAIA initiative generously funded by PAAIA member Bijan Ansari, is excited to announce its summer recipient Safa Ansari-Bayegan. The Ansari Fellowship was founded to encourage and empower young Iranian Americans to pursue careers in public service. The program provides exceptional students – both in graduate and undergraduate programs – with funding and access to a network of public policy experts during an unpaid summer internship.

Safa Ansari-Bayegan graduated from the University of Houston with a B.A. in Political Science and Philosophy and holds an M.A. in Human Rights from the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is currently a rising third-year law student at UC Berkeley School of Law. Prior to law school, Safa worked with the Regional Public Defender Office in Lubbock, Texas as a mitigation specialist on a trial level capital defense team. She also worked on post-conviction capital cases with Texas Defender Service in Houston and lethal injection drug research with Reprieve in London. At Berkeley, Safa has participated in the East Bay Community Law Center’s Education Advocacy Clinic where she worked with youth caught at the intersection of the juvenile justice and education systems. She is co-president of the Criminal Defense Society, a student organization which provides Berkeley Law students with a supportive community and opportunities to learn about criminal defense careers through both networking and discussions about important topics in criminal defense. She also participates in bi-monthly restorative justice circles facilitated by the men incarcerated at San Quentin Prison. As an aspiring public defender, Safa will spend the summer working in the Trial Division of the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia.

May 20th, 2019