The JEINA Project

Dr Parisa Glass PhD MBA GAICD

Director of Operations, Clinical Research Unit, UNSW Medicine & Health, and Director, Innovation & Enterprise, The George Institute for Global Health.  

Parisa has a PhD, an MBA, and over twenty years of experience across healthcare, medical research, and higher education. Over the course of her professional career, she has designed several collaborative programs and has built multidisciplinary teams to deliver impactful projects in medical research.

Dr Elnaz Irannezhad

Senior Lecturer in the School of Civil & Environmental Engineering's Research Centre for Integrated Transport Innovation, UNSW Sydney.

Elnaz is a senior lecturer in Transport Engineering and serves as the EDI Officer at the School of Civil Engineering, as well as an Associate at UNSW’s Human Rights Institute. Her research is focused on advancing science in the cross-disciplinary fields of freight transport and logistics engineering, addressing the challenges within this predominantly male-dominated area of research.

Sherine Al Shallah

PhD Candidate at UNSW Law & Justice, Affiliate at Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, Associate at Australian Human Rights Institute

Sherine is a refugee cultural heritage researcher, solicitor and teaching fellow with over twenty years’ international experience in senior policy roles. She has completed human rights course work at Aarhus University and has research experience in refugee and human rights law with the Kaldor Centre, UNSW, Australian Human Rights Institute and National Justice Project. She has also worked as a refugee caseworker and job advisor with asylum seeker centres and Talent Beyond Boundaries.

Samah Shda

Postgraduate Researcher at UNSW Sydney,  CEO and Founder of Unbound Stories

Originally from Baghdad, Samah pursued undergraduate studies in the United States before migrating with her family to Turkey and resettling in Australia through the humanitarian settlement program in 2019. Bringing over a decade of expertise in international development and advocacy with a focus on refugee education,Samah leads a pioneering project on the information journeys of refugee background students. She has worked with the United Nations and non-profit sectors, specialising in refugee and forced migration protection.

Maryam Zahid

Founder of Afghan Women on the Move.

Maryam is an award-winning Afghan-Australian human rights champion, artist, and entrepreneur. She founded Afghan Women on the Move, a non-profit for women survivors of war and trauma, and leads Women Empowerment Pty Ltd, a consulting firm specialising in cultural diversity and women's issues.

Maryam promotes gender equality and women's rights, focusing on refugee backgrounds, and has expertise in policy consulting, stakeholder engagement, and media communications.