Azadé Aria is a Research Assistant for the RC/W Project. She is currently enrolled at Thompson Rivers University as a Graduate Student in the Human Rights and Social Justice Program. Her academic career has focused primarily on gender in various contexts from the Indian Justice System to the Zoroastrian Religion, and her upcoming research will focus on understanding the coping mechanisms of female acid attack survivors in India. 

Hailing from the Zoroastrian Parsee community – a minority religious group in India, she has grown up witnessing marginalization and underrepresentation, and she wishes to change that for her own community as well as other groups. To create long-lasting societal impact, she has worked with organizations like the National Association for the Blind, Make Love Not Scars, Soroptimist International, and rePurpose Global to uplift women across various spheres. Her need for intersectionality led her to become a fellow for the Compassion and Resilience Fellowship hosted by the Foundation of Universal Responsibility led by His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. 

As someone who grew up with two working parents who relied on the support of grandparents to raise the children, she feels a deeply personal connection to the subject matter of the RC/W Project and is hopeful that the findings of this project will contribute to meaningful change in this area.