Welcome to Breaking Down Patriarchy. I'm Amy McPhee All the Best.

And today we are airing a special bonus episode on the ongoing revolution in Iran.

I'm sure, like all of you, I've been following this story closely in the news since September when 21-year-old Masa Amini was arrested by Iran's morality police for allegedly wearing her hijab improperly

and was beaten so severely in police custody that she died on September 16th of 2022.

This tragedy ignited a revolution in Iran that is ongoing, and I've been so moved by the stories and videos

that show crowds of unarmed people confronting the government chanting women, life, freedom.

Many, many protesters have been killed, including children. And I have so badly wanted to support

and help, but I have not really known what to do. Then a couple of weeks ago,

through my former professor and friend Beverly Allen, I met two Iranian-American activists who were

eager to share their voices with the American population outside of the Iranian-American community.

We will be featuring Iran as a country later in season three as part of our

season on global patriarchy, but we knew that this story was too urgent to wait until then. So I'm

honored today to introduce Dina Asna and Sagi Sakhazadeh. Dina Asna was born in the 1960s in Tehran, which is the capital city of Iran.

She left Iran with a scholarship from the German embassy in the mid-1980s and then studied and

worked in Germany for 21 years before moving to the U.S. in 2015.

Dina worked as a computer scientist until 2016 and then as a consultant,

artist, and activist. She is the founder of a nonprofit called Iranian Women in Network,

or I When, whose mission is empowering women through art. Sahi Sakhazade was born in Tehran also, but in the mid-1980s during the Iran-Iraq war.

She studied polymer engineering at Tehran Polytechnic and moved to Europe for her master's degree

and her Ph.D. studies in material science and engineering. Sahi lived in France and Belgium for six years and then moved to the U.S.

after her Ph.D. graduation. She worked at Harvard Medical School as a postdoctoral scholar

and then moved to Minnesota in 2018. She currently works as a senior biologist at 3M.

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